This piece really describes where I'm at perfectly, too. It's grown to be my expectation that no matter how often a friend and I say "yeah, let's catch up on this date!" the day will almost always come and pass without either of us bothering to reach out. Sometimes I try more to followup if it's a connection I really care to maintain, and there are still people who are close friends that I see a fair amount, but 2020 had a really compounding effect for me with where I was at life already. I'd always heard people talk about how 25 is when a lot of those daily friend circles start to fall apart, and having 25 come so shortly after the pandemic just insured that things would never be the same as they were before. Until 2019 or so, I was still hanging out with 4-5 friends on a given day. It's almost hard to believe now.

Sorry to hear you got stood up! I've definitely been there a couple of times.

Anyway, great piece as always.