Office hours UPDATED

For the record, I did not write that letter (third and final) to Jezebel's new friendship advice columnist, Sara Benincasa. But there is some overlap to my own experience. Granted, I live two hours from the city (an hour at least of train-time, but once you add getting to the train, then getting from Penn Station anywhere else...), not 20 minutes, but it sure does a number on the social life to move somewhere where seeing friends requires serious planning. There's far less play-it-by-ear for me now that NJ Transit is involved.

While I also enjoy hearing Dan Savage's advice to polyamorous centaur fetishists or whatever, in this case, I read Benincasa's response in the hope of actually finding out what one is supposed to do in this situation. Practical and entertaining!

As for the advice, I'm not sure. Some yes, some no. The whole thing about finding out who your true friends are, I mean, fair enough, but the point of having friends isn't just Lifelong Friendship, but also having people to go do stuff with. Losing friends-of-convenience without gaining new friends-of-convenience can also be annoying.

The bit about how some city-folk won't visit you in the country, yes, I suppose, although I personally have been bad about taking people at their word when they say they do want to come visit me in the woods. Those who have done so seem to have enjoyed it. But overall, expecting anything like a 50-50 arrangement of whose locale you hang out in is unrealistic. (Although 20 minutes? Eh.)

And the "office hours" advice... how to put this? First off, this "friend Baratunde" is a legitimate famous-person, so no wonder "[h]e was visiting a city for a short period of time and knew that he didn't have the time to see all his friends individually." But I've seen not-famous people do this as well - periodically my Facebook newsfeed will include an invite to a bar where a long-lost acquaintance is "holding court" or however it's expressed. In any case, the problem the letter-writer gave wasn't that she's so popular that every time she goes into the city, she simply hasn't the time to grace all of her many friends with her presence. It's not that she's offending Friend C by having only seen Friends A and B. No, her problem is that she's out of the loop. If she's at brunch, and has no specific plans to see specific friends, she'd better be fine with brunching alone.

Oh, and yoga, etc., this is entirely appropriate advice that's easier said than done, but must be said all the same, as it's the only answer.

UPDATE

Read some of the comments. Yes, as many point out, a "20-minute drive" means nothing to urbanites without cars. Lots of places are geographically near each other but super far with public transportation (see: Williamsburg and Park Slope). But it's not entirely clear why the letter-writer, who presumably has one herself, can't go into the city later at night.

As for the commenters who find it devastatingly simple to make friends at any age, and who are all, what's wrong with you if you don't share that experience... I do wonder how such a lack of empathy would be consistent with such alleged popularity (except in the middle-school sense, in which "popularity" = nastiness). Is it really so hard to imagine how certain life situations can make it more difficult to make friends? Or that, while there are some people who make friends instantly wherever they are, this isn't everyone's experience?