From the archive

Your friends love you. As long as you stay the same

That doesn't mean every skeptic envies you. Sometimes friends see an obvious hole in your plan. Sometimes you really have started acting like an asshole: canceling commitments, delivering lectures on growth, treating other people's quiet lives as evidence of intellectual defeat. In that case, the observation that you've changed may be accurate. A new job doesn't give you a license to despise old friends. But it helps to notice what they're actually asking for. Keep a promise? Make time? Stop being rude? Or become miserable and available in the same quantities as before? Those are different requests, even when they're delivered in the same wounded voice.