I was looking at my contact list in Trillian a few minutes ago, and it occurred to me that there's a huge disparity between the number of contacts I have and the number of people I actually talk to. There are perhaps half a dozen people I talk to online more often than once a week. I'm not sure if the number's actually that high, but let's say it is. After counting them up, I have 122 contacts in my list. So, I talk to roughly 1/20th of the people I could talk to. Or, since I've had the same list for about five years now, and I don't really delete names, let's say that that odd 22 are bad contacts that don't exist anymore. That raises the ratio to roughly 1/17. And it's not that I don't like the people on my list. They're all there because I consider them friends. So why is it that I don't really talk to any of them? Maybe I'm just not that kinda person. I don't really make a lot of phone calls to people. I'm not an easy guy to keep in touch with. I think, though, that in that regard I'm not too unusual. Except for a core group of friends, most people wait for other people to get in touch with them, rather than making the effort on their own. How much more socially active would my life be if I just went out of my way to talk to one more person every day? Maybe it's time I found out.