notquiteold

Nancy Roman

Category Archives: Friendship

Ghosted

I just spent all day writing a long piece on the end of a friendship. I decided not to post it. Because I realize that after 1500 words, what I wanted to say wasn’t there. Here is a short version. A year ago, a friend ghosted me. She broke dates, stopped calling, stopped returning my …

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Two Lessons A Year

Another Year. Another Birthday. A year ago I was sitting here writing about all the stuff I wanted to learn in the twenty years I figured I had left in my life. If I was right, and I’m always right (in my mind, anyway), I now have nineteen years left. Did I learn enough this …

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Ranking

I am a ranker. I love to put things in order. Not in my home… that is often order-free. In my mind. I rank objects by how much I like them. What is my favorite color? How about my next-favorite? We have a set of coffee mugs – 6 mugs, each a different color – …

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We Are Different

A few months ago, I wrote about my upcoming 50th high school reunion (Using And Losing Time). I was anticipating the event with both pleasure and anxiety. I was looking forward to seeing old friends again. But I worried that I had not been as ‘successful’ as I would have wished. That I wasted too …

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Choosy

Having high expectations can be a very good thing. Mostly, because I have found that when you expect the best from people, they usually give it. This is my best example. Our foyer. The carpenter who laid this floor had never done anything like this before. We showed him a photograph from a lovely mansion-turned-bed-and-breakfast …

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Not Quite A Friend

There’s a woman who belongs to the same circle of friends as I do. I don’t particularly like this woman. I don’t like her politics. I don’t like most of her opinions. We don’t enjoy the same hobbies. We have little in common. But she lost someone close to her and yesterday was the sad …

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Remembering A Friend

About a year ago, I wrote about kindness and friendship, and how I helped but ultimately failed a dear friend. I discovered yesterday that at the time I wrote that essay, my friend had already been dead for two years. Someone I loved – someone who had helped me and hurt me and I had …

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Interfere

I dispense a lot of advice on this blog. Clothing advice, dog-raising advice, aging advice, housekeeping advice – and most often – happiness advice. But it’s a lot harder to give advice in real life than it is to write about all my incredible (incredibly small, that is) wisdom. I really do believe my advice …

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Bird Droppings

When I was a freshman in high school, I had a pretty long walk to school. And I added to my long walk by meeting up with some friends who did not live near me. I had to walk several blocks in the opposite direction of the school in order to join them. I could …

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Incomprehensible

Now that I am finally retired from my income-producing vocation (as opposed to Writing, my income-reducing avocation) – I have found that is is really easy to slip into hermit mode. I am solitary by nature. Sitting at my computer most of the day, and sometimes not leaving the house for days, I have to …

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