It was supposed to be a holiday get-together. Then came a round of illnesses, and another. After a total of five cancellations, Veronica Farley-Seybert managed to meet up with friends in mid-February, exchanging gifts that had been languishing in a closet for six weeks.
“Here you go, finally. Merry Christmas,” the lawyer and mother of three in Pleasant Ridge, Mich., said. She mostly couldn’t believe the date happened at all.
“We actually did it,” she marveled.
Everyone wants to get together these days, at least in theory. But many of our calendars are clogged with extracurriculars and hybrid work schedules, years’ worth of pent-up business travel and birthday parties. We’re trying to make up for lost time, while getting reacclimated to the pace of a busy life.
Veronica Farley-Seybert, in a green dress, with her family on vacation in Hawaii, finally got together with friends after five cancellations.
Photo: Veronica FarleyHashing out the logistics of coffee with co-workers or lunch with friends often devolves into book-length text threads, online polls and scheduling apps…only to end with someone getting sick or ghosting anyway.
“Would 2024 work?” we might as well ask. Or “Is never good for you?”
“If I wasn’t busy, it would feel funny,” says Michael Wehner, who juggles four calendars—one for his day job at a tech company, one for his weekend gig playing bass guitar and a personal one that includes his wife’s work travel and his teenage daughter’s job. Then there’s the academic one, on a different platform, for the college teaching he squeezes in on the side.
Michael Wehner juggles four different calendars, including one for his gig playing bass guitar.
Photo: Stacey Wehner“It’s not just a dual life. It’s like a triple or quadruple life,” the 62-year-old says.
The busy brag
Some of us genuinely enjoy the feeling of frenzied, full lives, with every hour earmarked for something productive. But there’s also the temptation, perhaps uniquely American, to see busyness as a status symbol, proof that you’re important, industrious and in demand, as a worker and a human. We’re terrified of being seen as lazy.
“When I was in Italy, people typically brag about how tan they are, where they’ve been,” says Silvia Bellezza, an Italian native and associate professor of marketing at Columbia Business School. “In the U.S., you always really want to portray your working self.”
A 2017 paper from Dr. Bellezza and two co-authors found that Americans were likely to view those who work a lot as enviable and wealthy, concluding their busy schedules were proof of competence and ambition. Italians, meanwhile, tended to pinpoint those living a more leisure-filled life—traveling, enjoying the luxury of time—as having higher social status.
To Franck Brichet, a native of France, life in the U.S. resembles a constant chase.
Photo: Franck Brichet“It’s almost like a chase here. You have to chase something,” says Franck Brichet, who moved to the U.S. from France more than a decade ago. His childhood group of friends, nearly all of whom still live in France, have for the last 13 years coordinated weeklong international holidays together. Every month, the 12 of them each put 30 euros into a joint bank account. They pool the savings for a trip to Greece or Montenegro every few years, using an online poll to pick a date.
“It’s really a time to reconnect. You feel like you’re a kid again,” Mr. Brichet, a real-estate agent in the Kansas City, Mo., area, says of the excursions, typically spent beachside, sipping cocktails.
Of course, he’s been able to attend only one of the last four. Too busy.
How to connect
All hope isn’t lost. There are plenty of ways to give priority to connection, even in this frazzled moment, says Shasta Nelson, a speaker and author of books about how to cultivate friendship in our personal lives and at work.
Try a standing date, like Taco Tuesdays or a weekly poker night, where any member of your group can pop by. Keep expectations low. Your home doesn’t need to be perfect for hosting. Or pair a get-together with an errand you have to check off your list, inviting a friend to join you on that walk with the dogs.
When attempting to rally a group at work for a department lunch or off-site meeting, make sure to tell invitees the reason their presence matters.
“Give them a why,” Ms. Nelson says.
The ease of ghosting
Philip Toomey, a lawyer in the Los Angeles area, has started confronting chronic cancelers at work, asking if that meeting they’re proposing is definite this time. He’s gotten frustrated by calendar invites that disappear 15 minutes before the meeting is supposed to start, with nary an explanation or apology.
“There’s this protectiveness of the electronic communication,” he hypothesizes, emboldening people to hit delete or drag that meeting to another day.
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Scrolling through online dating matches or applying for 50 jobs with the click of a button, we have leaned into the distance and ease provided by technology, says Tessa West, a psychology professor at New York University who studies interpersonal relations. Bailing doesn’t feel that bad when you were mostly interacting with an algorithm or screen to begin with.
And yet, we’ve always had the tendency to withdraw when we get stressed and to see ourselves as more social than we actually are. On Monday, that Happy Hour seems like a great idea. By Friday afternoon, not so much.
“We have a really bad bias in reading what our future selves actually want,” Dr. West says.
Lashunda Lott’s plans to hang out with friends at the beach last summer fell through when everyone ghosted each other.
Photo: John Eric Zayas/Storied MediaLashunda Lott, a 22-year-old college student in Chicago, made plans to meet friends at the beach one day last summer, only to have everyone simultaneously ghost each other.
“It was like dead silence” on the text thread, she says. She assumed her friends felt the way she did: overwhelmed by the idea of coordinating it all and content just to lie in bed instead.
“Sometimes I question myself. Why do I plan things?” she says.
Sometimes, the only person you can count on to follow through with plans is yourself. Karen Ziv, of Red Bank, Tenn., has taken to buying her own single ticket to the opera or theater and floating the date to a friend. If they can come, great. If not, she’s happy to take herself out for sushi and a show.
“I can enjoy it how I want,” she says, “without waiting for someone.”
Write to Rachel Feintzeig at Rachel.Feintzeig@wsj.com
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Appeared in the March 13, 2023, print edition as 'Let’s Get Together! How’s Never?.'
The Link LonkMarch 13, 2023 at 10:22PM
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Sorry, Too Busy! Why It's So Hard to Get Together Right Now - The Wall Street Journal
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