I learned a lot in the year 2013. It was fun and hard and curvy all at once.

But one thing clearly stands out as the hardest lesson I learned in 2013. Here it is:

Chasing new adventures means losing old friends.

I wish this wasn’t the case. I honestly do. This is the one that still keeps me up at night. Getting dropped from Christmas card lists is not easy. Losing friends is not fun. This is the part that hurts me the most.

But every dream isn’t for everybody. That’s OK. That doesn’t make them villains, that just makes them human. Sometimes it isn’t that people stopped supporting your dream, it’s that they started supporting someone else’s dream. That’s a great thing for the other person.

In other cases, the friendship ends because you weren’t a great friend to begin with. That’s part of the reason this lesson is so hard to learn. It’s one thing to point the finger at haters, but that isn’t the case here. Sometimes changing your life exposes the truth that you didn’t work hard enough for a friendship in the first place. Recognizing that you’re the bad guy in the situation is never fun.

This post is starting to sound a little like lyrics from the Cure or an emo poem. It needs more queso jokes or Kenny Loggins lyrics.

In summary, I warn you this is going to happen if you change your life.

I also challenge you though, rebuild where you can.

My wife said that to me the other day. She said, “Go be vulnerable. Be willing to be hurt. If the friendship matters to you, it’s the only way.”

So there. To new adventures and repairing some old friendships and letting go of the rest.