Socializing overload

Those who follow my blog already know I’m not much of a people’s person… on the contrary, I’m quite happy in my little bubble.
For some reason, though, - probably something to do with star alignment - I’ve had to interact with way more people than I normally do and promise to actually go out and see a bunch of people I haven’t seen in God knows how long… so you can see why I’m exhausted.
The picture to illustrate this post is of a coffee I didn’t actually have. Met with an old friend the other day and she had the coffee, took a picture of it and then thought I might enjoy having a picture of it and sent it to me. People are weird, but since I have very few people I call friends I’m not going to hold it against her. Anyway, that’s the sort of socializing I can deal with… at least once in a while…

Socializing with a large group of people? I don’t know… I was really minding my own business when a friend texted me to ask if I was interested in a reunion organized by the newspaper where we both used to work… I was aware of the event, but wasn’t planning on going because…. I don’t know, that part of my life is over, gone, forgotten. The people I was friends with back then, also forgotten for the most part.
We live in an age when everything is ‘social’, but most of the socializing we do is still based on the old model - people we’ve associated with in a certain environment. Just as kids in school have a limited number of peers to choose a friend from, adults tend to socialize mostly with people in their work environment.
As I scrolled down the event page, I could recognize a few names and vaguely even put a face to those names… other than that, those people mean nothing to me. And yet, many years ago we were what can only be described as friends - those people you hang with during coffee breaks, make jokes, laugh together, talk about your family and your weekend. At some point, you know all there is to know about each other, from favorite TV shows and food preferences down to who’s cheating on their wives and with whom. That’s how socializing works for the most part - people who are forced to spend the larger part of their day together end up being ‘friends’ and this usually means having someone to listen to your problems. You look around the office and finally pick one as a friend - ‘that one will do’.
When you stop working in a certain place, all those friendships are also gone for the most part… you keep in touch for a while but as you move on you are forced to pick new friends in the new place.
And you don’t get to hear the end to their stories, you’re left wondering what happened to the asshole boyfriend you used to hear about every morning and the house they were trying to buy, how did that go?
It will be interesting to see if we can pick up on old friendships… at least for a couple of hours…
On the other hand, after a round of intense (for me) socializing via Messenger I discovered people find it quite natural to pick up on old grudges. In less than five minutes I got two messages ‘X is not coming because they don’t want to be face to face with Y’… People who haven’t seen each other in decades probably, but they remember they didn't like Y or Z. Who even cares? You don’t work together anymore, you don’t have to be nice to anyone and basically you can spend the evening talking to the people you do like, at least a little bit…

So, now that I said I’ll go I am naturally calculating what are the chances that the end of the world comes before Friday so I have a valid excuse not to go…
I’ll keep you posted!
How do you feel about people you used to know? Have you managed to keep in touch with those you went to college with or worked with when you were 20?