Whenever you are doing this, just get it done. Get those dates suggested. If the person doesn’t take you up on it, move on to the next person. You are putting your social life in your hands in 2025 Welcome to Dear Nina: Conversations about friendship. I am your host, Nina Badzin. I’ve been writing about friendship for 10 years, maybe more than 10 years. I’ve been saying 10 years for about a year. So we might be at 11 years at this point. Welcome to 2025. I love timestamps and milestones. I guess that’s how I’m wired. I know I’m not alone in that because if you go to Target or any store right now, it is full of journals and intention kind of workbooks, book type of things for the new year. I love that stuff. I bought something new from Target.

I’ve been bullet journaling for many, many years. I decided for this year, I could use something, more guided. So it kind of has a little space for your steps and your water and all that. And I used to draw all that out or make a chart I don’t have the energy for that this year. I need somebody to just have it drawn out for me. But we are talking about something that is a different kind of wellness check for the new year. I am going to be doing a monthly challenge. It’s Something I’ve kind of toyed with before in the Facebook group.

If you’re in my Facebook group, you know what I’m talking about, or if you’re new to it or you don’t know about it, it’s at Facebook called dear Nina, the group. That’s how you find it. Although I’ll have it on the podcast and I’m going to do it a little bit on Tik TOK too, but it’s just once a month. It’s not gonna be a daily thing.

Every month there will be some sort of challenge that will help you improve your friendships. Each month stands alone. So if you’re hearing this episode later than January, because you just found me first of all, hi, so happy that you found me. but don’t worry about hearing this episode later than January, because the challenges aren’t literally tied to a specific month. Any time is a good time to be working on your friendships and each one stands alone.

Let’s say you’re hearing this later in the year and you know that, there must be ones after it, like February, March, fine. Catch up on them. And most of them are things you can do in one day. You don’t need the whole month, but I’m giving you the whole month so that you can check in.

And then in the Facebook group, this is obviously an optional thing, there’ll be a thread for each month that you can report in and say, I did it just for accountability. that’s why I buy those journals or make the bullet journal charts that I was really into for, that was for a long time.

Back to the challenges. These are not going to be complicated challenges, but they will improve your friendships. How great is that? I’m not claiming that some of these are going to be easy because sometimes it takes a bit of an emotional push to do some of these challenges, but they’re not going to be Physically challenging, that’s for sure. And they won’t take a long time and they will improve your friendships.

Why will they improve your friendships? Every challenge that I’m going to put forth in 2025, They will put you in the driver’s seat of your social life. And that is a friendship value and a life value that I believe in strongly.

I believe strongly in being the person who runs your social life, not waiting for invitations, being the person who makes decisions about the kind of people you want to spend time with. So if you find yourself in a friendship rut of any kind, for any reason, either you really don’t feel like you have close friends or you have close friends who You can count on, but maybe you guys aren’t having any fun, or maybe you’re feeling like you can’t be yourself around them, or you’re feeling like they criticize you a lot, or you’re just looking for something deeper, something newer, something different. Then I think you’ll enjoy these short once a month episodes.

So how about we get to the actual challenge? The January challenge is to see a friend in person. Indirectly, that means the challenge is to reach out to a friend so that you can see that friend in person. So I haven’t decided if I’m calling this see a friend in person or reach out to a friend, but it’s like more than reach out.

Cause it’s not just reach out and say hi. It’s reach out and specifically make a plan. This is probably going to be a local friend. But if you’re able to see a long distance friend in person this month, by all means extra credit for that.

I’m generally speaking here about a local friend. Maybe it’s somebody that you text with often, but you haven’t seen in person in a long time. Maybe it’s somebody that you always walk with, so you do see them in person, but you want to change the venue. So you want to try to see them in a different way, maybe for a meal, maybe to go do something fun, maybe even just to go see a movie, go see Wicked.

Reach out to somebody and say, I haven’t seen Wicked yet or I saw Wicked and I want to see it again. You want to come with me. And even though you wouldn’t necessarily be spending a lot of time talking, there’s always communication that leads to planning the date and looking forward to something and just doing something different with a friend.

We’re really stripping back to basics here and just saying, see a friend in person. And this actually goes along with something I’m seeing a lot on social media at the end of December, early January.

something that I actually also did on social media because I saw it and I loved it. There’s all these memes going around where it’s a beautiful video or a picture of something like a mountain or a lake or an ocean or river, some travel spot. actually, it’s not always a travel spot. Sometimes it’s a fire pit and coffee cups or beer around it. the words on top of the little video or the picture says something like, texting is cool, but what if we Spent time together on the top of a mountain talking about life or texting is cool, but what if we sat around the fire and actually caught up?

And it’s always like that. It always says texting is cool, but, and then people change the end. I did one too. I took a picture of, my husband well, not us, but our coffee cups clinking in Mexico. And even though I was with family on that trip, we were with extended family. the cousins were together.

We are with, siblings. I had a chance to catch up with sisters in law, brothers in law, it was such an important thing to be in person. That was about family, not friends, but I still figured it worked for this social media trend. And so I did one too, that was like about texting is cool, but let’s see each other in person in 2025.

There is something powerful about getting off the screen with your friends and being together in person. In fact, a future guest I am having, my friend Hallie Sawyer is going to be on later this year.

And Hallie is, when she comes on, actually is not even going to be talking about this friendship project she’s doing. It’s not even the reason I’m having her on. I’m having her on for a different reason, which I will tell you when her episode is up. But she is, on her Substack newsletter, doing something called the Friendship Project, where she’s really working on her friendships this year.

She just had a post up that I’ll put in the show notes that was all about her realization, not that she didn’t know this, but she really felt it more deeply this time that a social media like is not a connection, not a real one. It’s something it’s, more than nothing. And trust me, I see so many people on social media complaining that their friends don’t like their stuff.

So that’s its own separate thing. I’ve done episodes on that. And mostly I against that belief. I’m with Hallie. I think if you are relying on social media likes to be the friendship, you’re going to find it empty eventually. That isn’t enough of a real connection. she talks in that post about, a college friend actually, somebody who was in her wedding that she really lost touch with. And that Hallie had relied on Facebook more specifically, to feel that she could catch up with people. She’s not alone. She’s just vulnerable and brave and saying it out loud. And that a lot of years have gone by now, right? I mean, Facebook, I don’t even know off the top of my head when it came out, but it’s been a long time.

Instagram now has been around a long time. So if you’ve been relying on that to stay in touch with long distance friends and even local friends, it would make sense that right now in the year 2025 you’re feeling that there is something missing in your friendships.

That is why My challenge for January is to reach out to somebody that you either are already friends with or maybe there’s an acquaintanceship there and there’s a potential friendship, but it’s not going to get to the next level unless you see that person in person. So two parts really you’re gonna have to reach out to the person and you’re going to have to suggest a date. One of my most popular Substack newsletter posts, it was also a popular podcast episode, but the newsletter was more visited in this case, than the episode, and it was called how to schedule plans with friends. It was episode 121 on the podcast, and I will link the newsletter. The newsletter actually went through two really great examples of somebody reaching out to me with plans and exactly what they did that I thought was so great.

And then I also try to do with other people. I’m not perfect, and I’m always working on my own friendships. That’s why I do this podcast. I do this podcast to be a better friend and to have better friends, but I do think something I do well is make plans. And what is the thing I do? I suggest dates. I don’t say, Hey, want to have lunch?

I say, want to have lunch on? And I’ll suggest four dates. I don’t say, want to go for a walk and then wait for the person to write back to me. I skip a step and I immediately suggest dates. And that is helpful. And if they can’t do those dates. And they’re interested in hanging out, then they’ll counter with other dates.

And if the person doesn’t counter with other dates, they just say, Oh, I can’t. Then I would probably move on to someone else. I don’t mean cut them out forever. I’m not a cut out person, but for this specific challenge, because we’re trying to get this done in January and you might already Be well through the month when you’re hearing this. And like I said, it’s okay if it’s later in the year.

Whenever you are doing this, just get it done. Get those dates suggested. If the person doesn’t take you up on it, move on to the next person. You are putting your social life in your hands in 2025 and I will be here to support you. Let me know how it goes. There’s so many ways you can reach me. They are all in the show notes.

Let me know how it went. Let me know if it made you feel a little more empowered in your social life. And if you felt more connected to the person that you spent time with. That is all for today. I’m really excited for all the interviews I have coming up in 2025. So many cool guests, so many great conversations to be had.

As always, I will ask you that if you are enjoying the podcast, I would very much appreciate a review on Apple podcasts, or if you listen on Spotify, you could give it stars there.

Thank you for taking the time to consider doing that. Come back next week for an interview episode. When our friendships are going well, we really are happier all around. Bye.