August 27, 2008
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How to get on my indifferent list
Last entry, I talked about me having different levels of liking a person. One of the levels that I mentioned what the indifferent level, and how hard it was to actually reside there. For the sake of education, I will detail how one friend fell from the like list, to the indifferent list.
I met the individual when she was dating a friend of mine while we were in infantry training. She was till in college at the time, and most of my interactions with her revolved around when I was hanging out with the friend. When I completed my training and went to Italy, we still stayed in touch. I was someone to talk to and helped to reassure her when my friend deployed to Iraq. Basically, I was easily contactable, and I figured that the best thing that I could do for my buddy was keep his girlfriend sane and assured that he would be fine. This continued until the point where he was injured by an IED, and in the following months ended up breaking up with her.
At that point, I remained as a person to speak to, and was generally there as her life progressed. We continued to talk when I deployed to Afghanistan, and I visited her for a few days after my deployment. After her stint of being single, I was one of the friends who told her that she should give a chance to a guy that she had been talking to long distance, a soldier who was deployed, and was getting out of the military when he returned. That was about two years ago, and they are still together to this day. They eventually moved to California, and she took on a role as a headhunter (or executive placement specialist).
Jump forward to when I was getting out of the military. I was back stateside and now in a closer time zone, with a number that didn’t require international rates. However, she would never answer my calls, nor return them. At one point when I brought this up, I received an answer of, “Well, I’m on the phone talking to people all day at work, so I really don’t feel like talking on the phone sometimes.” I was wonderfully grouped in with clients that she HAD to talk to. It’s not like we talked everyday, either. Maybe once every week and a half. During a later conversation I was talking about my job hunt, and said that since she did it I would be happy to be one of her clients, and she could benefit fomr commission. Her response was that she didn’t like to take friends on as clients. Fair enough, and she was out in Cali anyway [more on this in a moment].
A few months later, the company that she is working for ends up going under, and she has to job hunt. I decide to send her a few of the links to positions that Pepsi has open (there I’ve officially revealed that i work for a subdivision of Pepsi), that were on the easy coast, near family. She had been talking about heading back that way. They weren’t what she was looking for, and she had decided to stay out west When I stated that since she had been a headhunter, she had to have leads from her company. Her response was that it wouldn’t fit because they were all HR positions in the Northeast. The Northeast was the exact area that I had been looking for a job at a few months prior. Furthemore, my last job in the army was as a personnel officer.
That’s when she officially dropped down to the indifference level. Right when I got that last piece of info. eventually I would go on to never call again, remove her from my Myspace friends (a monumental task, since I don’t actually make an effort to manage that thing at all). I still check her Live Journal, but not than to see what she is up to, and offer a word of advice in troubled times. It’s more out of a type of morbid curiosity, where I watch someone who seems to be struggling with life, simple because it is life and presents problems, and complains about it due to their highly emotionally nature.
There are other things that had been going on that may upset different people, but that I actually didn’t care about because I valued the friendship. For example, I make it a point to try and remember the birthdays of my friends, and send them something as a token of the friendship. This may be as simple as the fact that they like Lilo and Stitch, and getting them the newest movie that they do not have. I can pretty much say that for the past 4 years, I made an effort to give this person a token of the friendship for their birthday and Christmas, so they understoofd that they were not forgotten. I never cared that this was never returned in kind, and i still don’t care when it comes to the friends that I am still in contact with.
Black 6, out.
Comments (6)
Hi, ryc: Deer especially when lived in Georgia hitting your car I can deal with. Now does that mean you can not drink Cokes anymore? I am a Tab drinker. I do not care for Diet Coke’s they are too sweet for me and too much bubbles. Sorry but Pepsi tastes like a rusty tin can to me. Hmmm, your post….you can say what you like dear friend but guess what you do care. I feel you may bother you to do this. A person that pays attention to the small stuff like silly things they enjoy does care. The fact you are “talking” about it proves this. Okay, off my Psy 101 box. Please have a Coke and have a grand Labor Day weekend! Sharon
@justhopingnow - Oh, I’m not saying that I don’t care about the situation. I just don’t care enough about them to be involved in their life, one way or the other. Neither to help or hurt.
Hey! This is about me!
I’m sorry that you actually felt “lumped” into people I HAD to talk to. Thats not how I meant that at all. The phone just became this weight I was sick of carrying around all the time. Even now, I don’t bother being attached to it, like I used to be.
And to refute something you said about the job searching: I told you that I couldn’t take “leads” from my previous employer because we were a executive level search firm, not a “just out of college search firm”. It was NOT because I was not interested in moving to the northeast.
And I’m sorry I got moved to your “indifferent” list. You were a good friend to me at several different times, and I have never thought about you like that.
@Taterbug160 - A lot of interesting things about your response. Most of which are that it all centers around the “you”. For example, my point about the job hunting was that you handled leads in the northeast, an area that I had been heavily looking into. That fact only came up when I suggested that you use your leads (check your Jan 25th entry). Figure it this way. I tried calling and was ignored. Without me reaching out and trying to call, I haven’t received a call from you in 10 months. And when you actually do something that shows initiative on teh side of contact, it’s only to be upset about me talking about how you wrote me off.
@Black6 - Who’s upset? And 10 months? Really? You counted?
@Taterbug160 - It’s not that hard to think of the last time that I tried to call you (the November time-frame), and the current date, and do the math. Don’t think that I was making tick marks in a book somewhere for this. I could have done the math from the last time that you called me, but am literally unable to recall an actual date where that happened.