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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think people are more comfortable now saying "no" to things that feel like obligations vs something they really want to do.

I do a get together with a few close friends. It's enjoyable with people I really like to spend time with instead of people who happen to live near me.[/quote]

You are onto something here. But I think there is more to it -- I think that a casual neighborhood holiday get together will feel much more like just one more obligation these days than it used to, because everyone is stretched and overcommitted and exhausted. When I was a kid, this just wasn't the case the way it is now. [/quote]

This is true. When I was a kid, the parents with the most high-powered jobs were still home at 6 pm to run soccer practice or show up at a dinner party. They might go into their office to do paperwork after bedtime, but no one was tethered to work 24 hours a day except certain parents who were doctors or our town's volunteer firefighters. It was always exciting when a pager went off during church, but even that was rare.

Even if people aren't truly working all the time, there's the feeling of being so drained by not being able to leave work behind that you just want to curl up alone and not deal with other people unless you're the rare extrovert. And extroverts now all flock together like some kind of social superclass rather than mixing naturally with the rest of us and pushing everyone else to be normal.[/quote]

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