Everyone knows life’s busier than ever. I’m a mum of two small children, with a job, endless domestic chores, and a husband. My social life often falls far down the list of priorities.
I’m not antisocial; my friends would call me an extrovert. But my energy for social encounters has diminished over the past few years and I’ve found myself hiding behind small talk – you know, talking only about your children and the strange things they’re doing. It’s a way of zoning out and it happens at the nursery gates, the gym, in the doctor’s office. I feel like I’ve lost my mojo. I’m socially burned out. Perhaps you can relate. It’s easy for us Brits to keep our walls up.
The other day, when I was chatting to a friend who moved to California, she told me how she’d just been to her pharmacist’s daughter’s seventh birthday party. Her pharmacist! They’d struck up a conversation at the counter, got to know each other a bit more each visit, and eventually became friends. She said that kind of thing happens quite a lot in her adopted home and she loves it.
I remembered how there was a time when I picked up friends wherever I went; in the women’s toilets on a night out, in the queue for a gig or sitting next to me on a long-haul flight. Perhaps it was the openness of youth, but meeting and connecting with new people was my favourite thing to do; I even learned Spanish and French to extend my capabilities – it gave me so much joy.
So in a moment of wild abandon, I committed in my head to Be More Californian and start a small-scale social experiment to reconnect me with my sociable roots. The rules would be simple: with everyone I met I had to push the conversation a little deeper than the usual “how are you?”, “yeah, fine thanks” dynamic us Brits often use as a shield to avoid intimacy.
First up was the receptionist at the GP surgery who looked like she was already burned out at 9.30am. Once she’d registered me, I lingered a bit. “How’s your day going?” I ventured. She looked a bit surprised, like this was not part of the usual script. “I’ve been having a mare,” I continued, before telling her about how my three-year-old had a meltdown on the way to nursery about whether a particular song was in Wicked part one or part two. I figured that window into my own little world may act as an invitation. I was right! We chatted until I was called in and we’ve crossed paths in the village a couple of times since and stopped to say hello.
Next up was picking up the kids from nursery. Usually I’d look up from my phone just to mutter to the parent next to me: “It’s taking a while.” But on this fateful day, I asked the mother I’d never met before how she was finding the transition to two children, given she had a baby strapped to her chest. In the time it took for our kids to be brought out, we exchanged names and numbers and made a plan to get together with the kids one weekend – huzzah!
It carried on like this for a few days, and gave me the impetus to meet up with my best mate. Over a bottle of California white (how apt), we got the small talk out of the way quickly and then I dived a little deeper. I told her I’d been feeling pretty wiped out recently but I’d learned that reconnecting with the people around me had given me a little extra spark back. I left her house feeling closer to her than I had done in a long time.
I ended my experiment feeling less like a wifi receiver failing to connect with the objects in my orbit and more like I’d plugged back into the broadband. Life’s not perfect all of a sudden, and, of course, as a Brit I’m committed to not being too open about my feelings – it gets a bit cringe doesn’t it? But this was such a good reminder that if you’re feeling a little disconnected, a good place to start is to dig a little deeper with the people you come across in your day-to-day. It might turn out to be just what you need – and them too!
To learn more about sharing California wine with friends, visit wineconnects.us
