When I was in college, I was lucky to meet a lot of wonderful people. I didn’t meet anyone I truly connected with until the last couple of years when we were delving more into the details of engineering and spending a lot of time in the labs. As we realized our “fun” time was coming to an end and we were heading to the “real world,” we spent as much time together as we could, but classes and job applications still took over our lives. Fast forward through graduation and we got split up. Some of us moved out of state and others just to different towns and jobs within the state… but even people who lived close didn’t see each other as much as they used to.
Being one of the people who moved out of state, I lost contact with a lot of my peers. I tried my best, but I was also prioritizing making friends in my new home. Like most people, last year got a little hectic. If you’ve read much on my blog, you’ll know a bit of my story but here is a quick recap: I broke up with my live-in boyfriend, my dad had a widow maker heart attack and survived, and I lost my engineering job all within a few months. Then I was left to decide if I wanted to go back to a field I didn’t enjoy or try and branch out.
While I was deciding what I wanted to do moving forward, I made a tiktok about my decision to leave engineering. This got back to one of my friends from college that I had slightly lost touch with and it was our wake up call in a sense… It’s easy to brush off that feeling you get when something reminds you of someone from your past. “I’ll reach out to them later” but later become even later and then months or years have gone by and you’ve missed so much in their lives so now it’s “well… it’s been so long they probably don’t even want to talk to me anymore.” Luckily, when Mary heard about me leaving engineering she decided to reach out. We caught up and realized exactly how much we had missed!
Instead of letting ourselves fall back into a routine of not talking and then catching up after months or years, we decided to chat once a week…. Which was a godsend. Every week on Mondays she would call me on her drive home from work. We talked through breakups, dates, job opportunities, continued schooling, mental health ups and downs and ultimately kept each other motivated to keep growing and pushing forward with our dream – hence the name Monday Motivational Meeting. Now that we are both in healthy relationships and new jobs, the “meetings” aren’t as serious. We don’t need as much of a push, but I am SO thankful that I have an amazing friend and a standing “appointment” to stay in touch, work through different thought processes, and hold each other accountable to our goals.
I can’t wait to see what all we can help each other accomplish in the future! So far in one year, we’ve built a business from scratch, finished surveying classes, started a new job, traveled to Puerto Rico (safely), witnessed a friend’s wedding, and come up with SO many more trips and goals we want to work on together. If you have a friend or two that you haven’t talked to in a while, reach out to them! What’s stopping you? Time? It’ll pass anyway, wouldn’t you want it to be spent with people you enjoy? Oh! This reminds me to update you on my reading journey. I have currently only finished 2 books this year… but one was HUGE (North and South by John Jakes – I’m waiting a bit on the other 2 in the series). I’m hoping that since the 4 I’m reading right now are fairly normal sized, I’ll be able to finish them up fast and get to my goal of 12 this year. What are you reading? What are your goals? And how do you stay in touch with friends who live far away? 😊 As always, if you take any fun pictures or videos, tag me on Instagram @SmileMakePeopleWonder and use the hashtag #DandelionSmiles. Don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss out on the next exciting idea!
Dandelion Smiles 