So I missed this week’s Sunday Sampler.? I thought about it all day long but just didn’t feel up to the task and instead spent the day in other futile pursuits.? These tasks are not worth mentioning here, or much of anyplace so I’ll spare you the mundane details of how I spend my time when I’m not at work.

I turn thirty tomorrow.? In the past few weeks leading up to this day of days I haven’t been too concerned - its just another birthday after all. Most of my conversations have been related to my once oft-stated goal of retiring by the time I was thirty.? Now, as I sit here in my crappy one bedroom apartment, just a few hundred yards from where it all started nearly a third of a century ago, I feel like I haven’t made any progress.

Sure, sure.? I’m not covered in afterbirth and I dress a whole lot better, but I’m still rather dissapointed in my progress.? You see, life is not best measured in what you have, where you live or what you do - it should instead be measured by the relationships you’ve built, the people you’ve touched and the people who have touched you.

And it is through this lens that I see myself as a failure.? I don’t have relationships.? There are people that I talk to, even some I love; my family, S and J, M and L and maybe a few others.? But, apart from my family and S, I don’t really know this people, and they don’t know me.

Is it a lack of effort that has put me in this situation?? Maybe.? My mom and sister say I’m very quiet when I’m around other people.? That’s probably true.? The thing is I don’t remember how to build relationships with new people.? The people in my life, those listed before, are all pretty much those who have been in my life for years and years.

I do meet new people sometimes, you can’t go through life without meeting people you don’t know unless you completely leave society.? But it seems that the people I meet are already living full lives.? They have their friends, their family, their routines already established - there is no room for a new comer.

I often think about how I’d like to meet someone who has lost those ties - someone who, like me, has nothing better to do that go through all the boring getting to know you stuff that starts off most new friendships.? A transplant, an expatriot?? Someone who just needs a friend.

But these people are rare.? No one picks up a moves to a new city anymore, at least not without a pre-determined place to plug in.? I know when I moved to a new city I went because I already had people there; S and J, plus family if I got really lonely.

But this is not why we’ve come here today.? Today we’re here to talk about….