The First and Last

Hi there, consider this the first post of hopefully a lasting blog.

Last night I went out with a few of my friends in the beautiful city of Melbourne, Australia. Since leaving home, school and moving on with our lives, my friends and I have found it harder to get together and enjoy each others company. As the years progress, this seems to be harder and harder each year.

Once we all had our little "cliques" or as we called them at school - "table groups". Namely they were called this as we sat together at the table at lunch time. It didn't always mean you hung out with them in classes, study breaks or after school, but you had to hang with them at school. It was like some unwritten rule of my school to reamin with that group.

I moved around between table groups a lot. But as gossip spreads like wildfire (yes, we were an "all girl" school) you avoided shifting table groups to hopefully duck under the gossip radar. I don't really want to know what stories the other girls spent their spare time inventing in response to my continual movement between groups. I shouldn't say that I don't care though.

Anyway, it was taboo to leave your table group and move to another one unless something big had happened. Usually then there was cause to gossip, even if the stories were a long way from the truth. That's how it was in school. Not so much now, it appears.

When I moved states to attend University, every holiday I aimed to come back to my home town and catch up with my supposed friends. The first few years it worked really well. Everyone was keen to go out for dinner and other seemingly exciting social adventures whenever I organised them. Very few were unable to attend and even so they always respond and give some legitimate excuse for their absence.

Not so anymore

Perhaps it is the way we are getting old, maturing, moving on or just plain lazy. I am not too sure which it is. But these days I seem to be lucky if I get a response from 15% of those invited, and usually only about half that respond actually attend. I wonder if it is the lack of care for social conventions in our increasingly technological society or perhaps the speed in whcih our lives seem to be running at the current time which lends itself to no-RSVP. Regardless of which it is, I find it, as a social person who enjoys organising fun activities with the people I usually hang out with, rather annoying. It is very difficult to try and book a table at a restaurant if no one responds, or if they do it happens to be at the last minute.

Admittedly I do most of the 'organising' via the wonderful social medium known as Facebook. Event creation is very quick and easy and often lends itself to group discussions on transport options. It also seems to be useful for the back pocket when the "old" method of communication was to call or message people using actual dollars on your phone account.

Reflecting on the minimal response to unvites for my amazing social adventures, I think I shall decline to continue using a social medium such as Facebook to do the hard-work of organising social gatherings for me.