My colleague, who owns a dog she adopted recently, is going away for a quick two-day trip, and she said that although she had a number of friends who love her dog, she literally would not trust them with her dog’s life. “My friends cannot be trusted!” she exclaimed. “They’re so irresponsible! I’m scared I’d come back home to my dog either getting poisoned or dead.”

This was comical to me because it reminded me of the time when I was arguing with a former colleague two companies ago about how to differentiate friends versus colleagues. Just because you trust someone as a friend in your personal life does not mean you’d trust them in the workplace to do a good job, and vice versa. Good times do not require responsibility. Likewise, you may get along swimmingly with a colleague when working on projects, but maybe he’s not really someone you’d want to have dinner and drinks with after work, or someone you could conceivably have a good time with anywhere if you did not have work in common. We had this conversation after this colleague referred his friend to our company despite his friend having zero industry experience, and having the audacity to not even research the company nor the role he was even applying for. He genuinely had no idea what he applied for and what he was interviewing with me about. He never got passed round one of interviews, needless to say. My then-colleague argued with me, saying that everyone deserves a chance (at getting a job? Yes. At this job? Absolutely not). He was completely incapable of differentiating friend vs. colleague, or responsible vs. not responsible.

One of my friends repeatedly questions how worthy my other friends are of me when he hears the irresponsible stories that I’ve shared. “These are the people you call closest to you? Really? Don’t you think you need new friends? How can your friends be so irresponsible?”

I don’t know. How can they? Maybe it says more about me than it does about them? Maybe I just subconsciously like having people around who are more irresponsible, selfish, less trustworthy, and not as confident, because it makes me feel better about myself? Who knows.

Unlike at my last company, where I currently work, I am lucky and privileged to say that I have a number of colleagues that I not only respect but also truly like as people. We have really interesting conversations about everything from politics to cooking techniques to travel, and I feel like for the most part, the majority of the people I work with are actually good people. I could not honestly say that about my last job.

What this tends to result in is my subconsciously thinking about my colleagues, which tends to be a little strange and a little funny. My dreams have always been a big part of my life, even in the waking state, because I tend to think about them a lot. This morning, I woke up from a dream that one of my colleagues (who I’ve been avidly discussing the Instant Pot with since he received it as a wedding present recently) and I were running from the Gestapo through an underground tunnel system. We were running and dodging pipes when suddenly, he stops me and reminds me that the only thing we have to eat is a box of edamame-based pasta, and how were we going to cook it since we had no equipment, no water, and were still on the run? I wasn’t sure how to respond to it since we were in flight and fear mode, so I just grabbed the box and kept running and encouraging him to run with me. I texted him and told him about the dream after, and he laughed and said that the Instant Pot would have saved us in that event.

This segways into my first Instant Pot experience today, which was a total failure. I tried to make vegetable biryani in the Instant Pot as my first experiment, and it ended up burning the bottom of the pot and also overcooking the biryani into a disgusting brown mush. In retrospect, I should have stuck with a simpler beginner’s recipe to get used to the IP, but I figured that since the water steam test worked just fine that… well, how hard could it be to pressure cook some spiced rice?! Now, I’m thinking about pressure cooking a bean curry for tomorrow to see if I can get the hang of this new pot or not. I’m so sad that I’ve now become a statistic for the dreaded “burn” signal that the IP can give, as it’s one of the most common issues that new Instant Pot owners face.

Tonight after work, I ventured out to Jamaica, Queens, to visit my work friend, who is out here visiting her family for the next week. Although she is originally from Queens, she’s based in our Amsterdam office and lives there with her husband and three-month-old baby daughter. She’s been there for quite some time and has built a nice life for herself there. They own an apartment, have good jobs, and have a solid social network they’ve built there. She said she cannot imagine ever moving back to New York given the lower cost of living and the higher quality of life in Amsterdam; I can’t really blame her.

I got to meet her daughter tonight at her parents’ house, and then afterwards, she drove me to her favorite Shanghainese spot that is famous for its delicious xiao long bao/soup dumplings. We caught up about work and life in general. And she told me the story about how she and her husband moved to Amsterdam at a similar time when her husband’s friend moved, as well, also with his wife. While my friend made efforts to make new friends with expats and locals and established herself in Amsterdam, her husband’s friend’s wife did not. She made no effort to make friends, didn’t really like her job, and when they both got pregnant at the same time, she had friends to celebrate with, and this woman had no one. While my colleague seems to go with the flow of the ups and downs of her new baby, this colleague’s wife does not, and instead needs to have an extremely strict, regimented schedule for her baby. She’s clearly miserable.

“You kind of create the life you want,” my friend said over soup dumplings and cumin beef. “Like if you want to make friends, you have to put yourself out there and do it. And if you want to be a working mom who has a life outside of work and being a mom and wife, then you have to make the effort and create that life that you want. You can’t just expect it to happen for you the way she did. With me, I still have hangouts with expats throughout the day and my book club. I don’t care that I have an infant at home; I still need a life and an identity outside of work and home. Don’t we all kind of want that to some degree?” She noted to me that her American friends both in Amsterdam and in New York seem to lack that balance, that it seems to be a common thread among American moms in general that being a mom has to take up all your time and energy and leave you with no time or desire or energy to do anything else. “It’s another reason I love it here,” she said. She has more perspective there, and more inspiration to be a better and more well-rounded person.

Everything she says seems so simple, but when push comes to shove, I see so little “balance” in the people I know and interact with on a day to day basis.

I need to spend more time with people like her.

Chris and I met my friend for afternoon drinks and an early dinner this afternoon. This friend and I met about seven years ago during the summer at another mutual friend’s housewarming party, and we clicked immediately when we met. We had a lot of interests and outlooks in common, and it just felt really easy to spend time together. And unlike so many other people I’ve met in New York City since I moved here about ten years ago, he wasn’t flaky and always committed to spending time with me. It was a refreshing friend experience to have in a city that is so full of people, yet at the same time, ironically, can  feel so lonely.

It’s another bittersweet period, though, because he’s now leaving us for a new job in Seattle. His girlfriend will be joining him by the end of the year, so that’s another set of friends I am (at least locally) saying farewell to. When he messaged to tell me he got the job offer and would be moving this month, the selfish part of me felt so sad. I spent some time reflecting on our shared memories together, even the awkward times when I was not in a relationship, his was ending, and I wasn’t quite clear if he had feelings for me or not that went beyond friends. I still remember one thing he said to me that made me smile and feel so odd… seven years ago. We were talking about our full names and what their origins were. We discussed how my first name was chosen, and that my middle name is Vietnamese.

“Your first name is French, your middle name is Vietnamese, and your last name of Chinese. Your name is like the United Nations!”

He’d likely never remember he said this, but I still remember this quote and smile to this day. I wasn’t sure if that was meant to be a flirtatious comment, but it made me feel weird nonetheless. Those words, that sentiment, stayed with me.

I used to tease him about always alluding to things but never actually digging deeper. “What are you, like a robot?” I would say, smiling and laughing. I knew he was capable of having emotion, but he didn’t like to express it, and when he did, it was obvious he was being asked to exit his comfort zone. I realized later it was a defense mechanism he admitted to using so that he wouldn’t get attached to people, especially as someone who had a childhood where he always had to move for his father’s job every few years, which spanned not just cities, but countries. It was too painful to become close to people and be forced to part ways at any given moment. He eventually did open up a bit and gave me credit for trying. He also tried to get to know me more. I was never one for superficial relationships. As a close friend of mine once observed and said to me, “You’re such an intense personality; you will either go all in or not go at all.”

He even called me when I broke up with my last boyfriend that year. He was texting me because he knew the day we’d meet to break up, and we talked on the phone for a good hour while I was in San Francisco and he was in New York. It was so late where he was, but he stayed up just to talk to me. I think of these moments now and wonder what was going through his mind then. But then, it seems silly to think about because our lives are in such different places now; we’ve both changed jobs twice since then, I got into a relationship immediately after, then got married; he started his own relationship that had its ups and downs. They bought an apartment. Chris and I moved into a new apartment. He and Chris didn’t originally get along. Now, they do just fine. A lot has changed. I wonder what it would be like if we had a “trip down memory lane” conversation and how that might actually go.

Time goes on. Life goes on. Memories, as Barbra Streisand sang, are the colors of my mind, of the way we were. But life doesn’t stop for these memories or thinking of the past. Instead, it drags us by the legs to open the doors to our future, which will become new memories for us.

I caught up with my good friend over dinner tonight, and as per usual, she gave me a big bear hug and kissed me when she saw me, and did the same when we parted ways. I can  always count on her to increase my levels of oxytocin and make me feel loved and appreciated. She’s been like this ever since we first met when we were 11; this is one of a handful of things that has not changed about her at all. And I love it. With her, I always feel loved and appreciated, like I belong. It’s probably a big part of why we’ve been friends so long; her level of affection towards me.

I thought about this today after I spoke with a colleague of mine who has been plagued by stress, mostly caused by work. His sleep has been really poor in the last few weeks, and he will occasionally wake up with his arms and/or his legs crossed and feel awkward. Increasing oxytocin levels is actually supposed to help decrease stress and improve sleep. Maybe he just needs to be hugged more frequently and by more people?

What I’m about to write won’t make any sense unless I outline the Insights Discovery “colors” that act as identifiers of traits, so, this is generally what each color represents (on a good day):

Extraverted Thinking – “Fiery Red”: competitive, demanding, determined, strong-willed, purposeful

Extraverted Feeling – “Sunshine Yellow”: sociable, dynamic, demonstrative, enthusiastic, persuasive

Introverted Feeling – “Earth Green”: caring, encouraging, sharing, patient, relaxed

Introverted Thinking – “Cool Blue”: cautious, precise, deliberate, questioning, formal

After spending the last three full days with my group of 16 colleagues of all Insights colors and personalities, although it was both enjoyable and productive, I was looking forward to being back at a hotel room in a real bed this evening. Although I love socializing and having stimulating and thought-provoking conversation with crazy back and forth banter, after long periods of having this interaction, what I really crave is alone, quiet time to just be by myself and process all the information I’ve digested. I guess you could say that’s the slow thinking turtle in me.

Before I’d get to my much coveted hotel bed, though, I’d made plans to see my two best friends living in San Francisco for dinner in the Richmond District. I felt so mentally exhausted and even was tempted to cancel because I was a bit under the weather, but I knew I really wanted to see them.

The funny thing about being in a high-energy, constantly “on” environment like our retreat center is that because the energy is so bold and everyone is spit balling and constantly talking and wanting to be heard, it makes you look at your next social situation in a comparative light. So when I arrived at the Mexican restaurant for dinner this evening, although I’m fully conscious of the types of friends these women are, I feel a bit judgmental to say that the level and energy of the conversation was a bit disappointing for me after the last three days. Even though I thought I wanted something quieter and calmer, when I actually got it tonight, I felt dissatisfied. There wasn’t any disagreeing or back and forth banter to clarify topics or opinions tonight; there was no new, exciting information shared that shed light about one another; there wasn’t even a lot of self-awareness sadly that I could notice, and that was probably the biggest annoyance for me given that I spent the last three days working on trainings and exercises that solely focused on increasing self-awareness because it ultimately benefits everyone. I left my actual friends tonight feeling let down, and I wasn’t sure if it was really because of them or because of me.

The entire conversation, with a little button pushing from me, was just so passive. Passive was the resounding word in my head as the night wore on. I had one friend zoning out and not listening when work topics were being discussed (she isn’t currently working and hasn’t had a career-type job at all). She’d bring up superficial topics like which expensive restaurant she should choose for her boyfriend to take her for her upcoming birthday (and literally ask for that – an “expensive” restaurant instead of one that she just really wanted to try that might be pricey. I found it unfulfilling. Even when I wanted to go deeper and talk about the Osteria Francescana meal or how much I loved Bologna’s quaintness, we never quite got there… because I didn’t get the sense that my audience cared that much to hear those details that I enjoyed so much, and so the subjects changed. When I brought up the actual Insights training, my friends were shocked to hear that my subconscious qualities were strongly “green.” Green types are seen as being patient, relaxed, empathetic, the mediators, the peace makers, the ones who want to bring harmony to a group. There was this immediate “no” reaction from both of them. They think I’m on the aggressive side, so a red. And one of them, my most conflict-ignoring and avoiding friend, insisted that of us, she was the peace maker. I told her… awkwardly because she hates confrontation and being countered, that she isn’t truly a peace maker or mediator because a real peace maker mediates a problem and addresses it… she simply avoids and ignores it as long as possible. That isn’t the same as peacemaking, and it would be troubling to think that she believes that. She didn’t respond to this (which I expected given who she is) and the topic changed.

But you know what? What I really would have loved in that specific situation is if she actually did respond, if she did say, well, hey, there are examples in social situations where I did try to actively create peace, and maybe you just weren’t there to witness it. We’re not with each other 24/7. We may have known each other 20+ years, but that doesn’t mean we know every experience each other has had. So maybe what I have asserted is wrong because it’s solely based on my interactions with her. But hey, I’d be open to hearing them and changing my opinion if she’d be willing to share them. However, I’ll never know what I don’t know and what is not shared with me. That countering or rebuttal or continuing of a conversation that has a potential to change the other person’s mind – that just doesn’t happen a lot with us, and that makes me sad. And if it does happen, it’s coming from me 99% of the time.

I guess it also bothered me to think that they would never perceive me as a peace maker given all the family situations I’ve had to navigate and assist in within my extremely negative and dysfunctional family; have they heard me when I have described those situations? Do they remember or do they conveniently forget the most painful topics I bring up around family? How much do we all really listen to each other?

The other thing I thought about is what we discussed in our Insights training. Depending on what the other people in our group are like, our colors “adjust” or morph so that we feel fulfilled and can compensate for what may overall be lacking in the group. So in their perception, perhaps I am a red because out of the three of us, I am the strong-willed one, the aggressive one who pushes for more. I definitely feel that way when I get bored when topics are slow or boring or monotonous or when a decision cannot be made. But overall, in a diverse group of people, I rarely feel that I am the red one…. The yellow one, yes, as that’s the dominant color my evaluation says I am, but almost never red.

After my dinner with my friend last night, someone I’ve known for the last six years here in New York, I thought about the types of people I tend to attract. A number of my friends have a difficult time expressing their feelings about sensitive topics. On the surface, we touched a lot of difficult topics last night: parenthood, infertility, broken families, the political climate of our country right now, but whenever I tried to push it to the next level, my friend’s body language made it clear that he was uncomfortable and didn’t want to continue, so… the subject would change.

But he has no problem sending me articles that discuss difficult issues. It’s just that he doesn’t really want to delve into these topics in conversation. Why do you want to bring up topics and not discuss them? Is it because you are afraid we will disagree and there might be some discord? When do you get to a point in your friendship (if ever) where you can disagree, and it will be just fine and you can move on?

In the book I just finished reading called The Female Brain, the author, who is a psychiatrist, discusses how there are parts of the female brain that on average are larger than the male’s, the parts that have to do with empathy, care taking… and avoiding conflict and ultimately confrontation. Well, on average, I seem to attract both women and men who avoid conflict and confrontation at all costs, even if it means avoiding having interesting and stimulating academic debates.

There are very few parents I’d be willing to eat dinner with without my friends. It’s not that I dislike or hate any of them, but it’s more that if I am going to have dinner with someone who is not family, it better be someone who I can have decent 1:1 conversation with who won’t bore me to death.

A friend from college has parents who, during our college years, would come to visit her at least once a year during the school year. Each time they’d come, they’d generously offer to take one of her friends out, and oftentimes, that lucky friend was me. It was usually her dad coming, so he’d indulge us and provide us temporary respite from the monotony of dining hall grub. And we’d eat delicious things like Ethiopian/Eritrean, Indian, or Tibetan, and he’d happily and enthusiastically dig in with us. And we always talked about things that were interesting to me, like culture, travel, food, and more food. It was so much fun, and I loved seeing him.

Well, my friend’s parents were in town this week, and they messaged me on Facebook to let me know they were coming and would like to see me, so I guess the feeling was mutual. Tonight, I treated them to BCD Tofu Korean tofu stew, and we talked about their daughter, Arizona, politics, culture, language, art, museums, and travel. I was so happy.

And then I thought… it kind of makes me sad I can’t have the same conversations with my own parents.