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An 8 hour day
Feb. 4th, 2026 11:00 pmWhen I called for my regular midday call today, I was a little disoriented because the call started oddly, but it clarified in purpose rapidly and I cut the person off mid-tirade to ask if this was a long way of saying he didn’t want to be my friend any more. He said yes, and then developed that theme some more as I wished him a nice life and hung up the phone.
As always, if you don’t want to be my friend any more, you can do a fade, not pick up the phone, not respond to messages, and, if you have the capacity to do so, tell me, “Walkitout, don’t call me, I won’t call you” or something similar. If you’re really direct — which, if you are from my earlier life, you probably are not, because the goddess knows that I’ve struggled with this as well — a simple, “I don’t view you as a friend any more” or “I don’t want to be friends anymore.” I know how to say the anodyne words in response: “I’m sorry to hear that and I wish you well in your future and please know the door on my side is always open.”
I discussed the call and the now ended relationship in some detail with my sister, who unexpectedly had a day off (school case, too sick to attend school so she didn’t have a shift). She had traveled as part of the group in December. I also discussed it with Priestess, who had some cogent words to say on the topic of being more proactive about communicating with friends as things are not going well. I’ll definitely think about this, because it is insightful, and recently reading _Group_ by Christie Tate has made me more sensitive to the cost of carrying secrets around, whether your own or others.
I also discussed the call with other potentially affected parties because as we go through the world we bring our emotions from our recent past into new contexts and surprises can be very unpleasant. And I let the cocktail zoom crowd know, because I personally find it unlikely that a person who fired me as a friend would want to continue to attend a cocktail zoom that I host. Also, I for sure don’t want them there, LOL. In the interests of reducing inadvertent contact, I poked around a bit and removed location sharing and removed friend status and things of a similar nature. I’m sure I forgot something.
My daughter told my son, and he is thinking about it. He was worried it might be his fault, which of course it is not at all, and there’s no particular reason why a falling out between 2 people has to affect anyone else’s relationships.
Anyway. That’s a 2 hour weekly phone call that has been profoundly resistent to shortening. Simple math says I just was given the gift of an extra 8 hour day once a month.
That’s a big present.
Lots of gratitude to the people who took my unexpected midday calls and talked this through with me. I really appreciate and love all of you.
If you don’t know the person and the context, this is likely profoundly confusing, but I don’t necessarily feel like getting into the details here, beyond noting that this blog was quoted back at me (because I didn’t want to travel with him anymore, and I suspect he didn’t grasp that that desire not to travel with him was driven by concern about how badly that could go for him and others if he was away from familiar and supportive spaces and had a negative health event — which as I age, I’m increasingly sensitive to), and I was accused of gaslighting him.
My sister had some funny things to say about gaslighting, mostly, “As if you had the time.” Which, fair!
As always, if you don’t want to be my friend any more, you can do a fade, not pick up the phone, not respond to messages, and, if you have the capacity to do so, tell me, “Walkitout, don’t call me, I won’t call you” or something similar. If you’re really direct — which, if you are from my earlier life, you probably are not, because the goddess knows that I’ve struggled with this as well — a simple, “I don’t view you as a friend any more” or “I don’t want to be friends anymore.” I know how to say the anodyne words in response: “I’m sorry to hear that and I wish you well in your future and please know the door on my side is always open.”
I discussed the call and the now ended relationship in some detail with my sister, who unexpectedly had a day off (school case, too sick to attend school so she didn’t have a shift). She had traveled as part of the group in December. I also discussed it with Priestess, who had some cogent words to say on the topic of being more proactive about communicating with friends as things are not going well. I’ll definitely think about this, because it is insightful, and recently reading _Group_ by Christie Tate has made me more sensitive to the cost of carrying secrets around, whether your own or others.
I also discussed the call with other potentially affected parties because as we go through the world we bring our emotions from our recent past into new contexts and surprises can be very unpleasant. And I let the cocktail zoom crowd know, because I personally find it unlikely that a person who fired me as a friend would want to continue to attend a cocktail zoom that I host. Also, I for sure don’t want them there, LOL. In the interests of reducing inadvertent contact, I poked around a bit and removed location sharing and removed friend status and things of a similar nature. I’m sure I forgot something.
My daughter told my son, and he is thinking about it. He was worried it might be his fault, which of course it is not at all, and there’s no particular reason why a falling out between 2 people has to affect anyone else’s relationships.
Anyway. That’s a 2 hour weekly phone call that has been profoundly resistent to shortening. Simple math says I just was given the gift of an extra 8 hour day once a month.
That’s a big present.
Lots of gratitude to the people who took my unexpected midday calls and talked this through with me. I really appreciate and love all of you.
If you don’t know the person and the context, this is likely profoundly confusing, but I don’t necessarily feel like getting into the details here, beyond noting that this blog was quoted back at me (because I didn’t want to travel with him anymore, and I suspect he didn’t grasp that that desire not to travel with him was driven by concern about how badly that could go for him and others if he was away from familiar and supportive spaces and had a negative health event — which as I age, I’m increasingly sensitive to), and I was accused of gaslighting him.
My sister had some funny things to say about gaslighting, mostly, “As if you had the time.” Which, fair!