I don't know if others are experiencing this but one thing I've been struggling with lately is how isolation is affecting, like, more casual friendships, for lack of a better term. I don't know if it's possible for those relationships to survive this, the longer it goes?

I've been able to keep things semi-normal with family and close friends who live near me—we can get together in small groups, and those relationships are so important that we all sorta tacitly agree to set aside the ungainliness of those interactions for the sake of having them.

And relationships with family and close friends who live elsewhere are (maybe surprisingly?) easier to maintain, too, since Zoom has made geography semi-irrelevant. Probably seen more of my friends in other cities over the past 4 months than in the previous 4 years. That's great!

But before the pandemic, there were people I didn't know as well, who I hadn't known for years, who are wonderful and important to me: the pickup basketball crew, the high school buddies, the former coworkers I'd get a drink with. That stuff is all...gone.

I dunno, maybe this is just me and my social neuroses, but it feels like there's a whole group with whom I'm close enough to really enjoy going to a bar or something, but with whom I'm not close enough to set up a Zoom date or an elaborate socially-distanced BBQ or whatever.

Family and close friends are obviously really important, but I don't think I realized before this how the more casual, below-the-radar, let's-meet-up-for-a-drink-once-a-month-or-every-few-months relationships were also so integral to mental health and happiness.

And I guess my worry is that those atrophy so much this year, especially as public life and public spaces remain shut down, that many of them die on the vine and never come back.