july 30: the un's international day of friendship. a real holiday for the thing most of us are worst at. murthy's house calls podcast spent two episodes on friendship: great ones take effort. one text today. the one you keep almost sending. https://archive.org/details/hhs-house-calls-2023-02-07

i found out a friend of eleven years changed jobs from a linkedin notification. nobody did anything wrong. we just quietly stopped being the people who tell each other things first. texting them tonight. no catch-up marathon, no apology for the gap. just: "saw the new job. proud of you."

july is social wellness month. quiet reminder: your loose ties count too — the old coworker, the neighbor you wave to, the barista who knows your order. Granovetter named these 'weak ties' in 1973. they're often how news, ideas, and chances first reach you. one's worth a hello today.

build-in-public: the thing people ask me for most is a daily 'did you call your mom?' push. i keep saying no. an app that nags becomes one more chore you're behind on. so Oh Crap Hey just sits there — a quiet list, waiting till you open it. the nudge stays yours. https://ohcraphey.app

a reach-out tracker that makes you stop and log the reach-out has already lost. you'll text your friend, then forget the bookkeeping. so in Oh Crap Hey, long-press a name to message, call, or FaceTime — and it logs the reach-out itself. you just talk to the person. https://ohcraphey.app

june is men's mental health month. a lot of the men i know don't open up across a table. they open up shoulder to shoulder — driving, walking the dog, fixing something. so skip the big talk. text a guy to come do a thing. the rest tends to follow. US: 988 · UK: 116 123

Putnam's stat that stuck with me: from 1980 to 1993 more americans bowled than ever. league bowling fell ~40%. we kept the hobby, lost the weekly room. text a friend. pick a regular thing. https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/bowling-alone-americas-declining-social-capital/

build-in-public, mac edition. for weeks, adding a contact on the mac rendered the new name half-hidden behind the next row. SwiftUI's List wouldn't push the rows down. adding someone is the one thing the app can't fumble. so i tore out List and hand-rolled the scroll view. it holds now.

the friend you keep meaning to text would probably be glad you did. "when we fear rejection, we constantly reject people," psychologist Marisa Franco says. so send it. https://www.nosmallendeavor.com/marisa-franco-how-to-make-and-keep-friends-according-to-science

father's day. if today's heavy — your dad's gone, you're estranged, you wanted to be a dad and aren't, he's here but it's complicated — you're not alone in it. the day's bigger than the cards and the grill photos. US: 988 · UK: Samaritans 116 123

build-in-public, loneliness awareness week. early on i prototyped streaks. text a friend, keep the streak alive, watch it climb. then i killed it. a streak you break is one more way to feel like you failed at friendship. the app just shows time since you last talked. #LonelinessAwarenessWeek

loneliness awareness week. the friends i've drifted from were mostly the middle ring — the gym regular, the neighbor a sidewalk handed me. Dunkelman named that layer; it thins fastest once the room's gone. text one of them. #LonelinessAwarenessWeek #LetsTalkLoneliness US: 988 · UK: 116 123

loneliness awareness week. i want a good story. when did a friend text you out of nowhere — no occasion — and it landed exactly when you needed it? most of us never learn our small check-in mattered. tell me about one that did. #LonelinessAwarenessWeek #LetsTalkLoneliness

loneliness awareness week. saturday nights get loud — everyone looks busy, and the quiet feels like proof of something. it's just a quiet saturday. lots of us are home too. text one of them — "what're you up to?" counts. #LonelinessAwarenessWeek #LetsTalkLoneliness US: 988 · UK: 116 123

loneliness awareness week. admitting i'm lonely used to feel like confessing i'd failed. i hadn't — lots of us are quietly in it. the week's one idea: say it out loud to someone. "i've been lonely lately" is a whole message. #LonelinessAwarenessWeek #LetsTalkLoneliness US: 988 · UK: 116 123

loneliness awareness week. across 148 studies, strong social ties raised survival odds ~50% — on par with quitting smoking. connection is load-bearing. text someone you miss. #LonelinessAwarenessWeek #LetsTalkLoneliness https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1000316 US: 988 · UK: 116 123

it's loneliness awareness week — the 10th. hi Marmalade Trust, happy anniversary. the week runs on small, repeatable acts. today's: text someone you haven't talked to since february. no occasion, no perfect opener. just hi. #LonelinessAwarenessWeek #LetsTalkLoneliness

snooze hides a contact you're not ready for. the risk: the break quietly becomes forgetting. 1.2.6: turn on 'remind me when the snooze ends' and a single local notification brings them back the day it's up. opt-in, nothing leaves your phone. a pause with an end. https://ohcraphey.app

genuinely curious about the initiators. every group has the one friend who texts first — plans the thing, sends the "you alive?" meme, keeps the thread breathing. if that's you: what makes you the one who reaches out? and if it's someone else — when did you last tell them it matters?

june is men's mental health month. a lot of us answer 'good, you?' on reflex. i do it too — someone asks how i'm doing and i'm halfway into 'fine' before i've checked. next time a friend asks, answer one notch more honestly. then ask one back like you mean it. US: 988 · UK: 116 123

monday is national best friends day. the friend you'd call first if everything went sideways — when did you last call them just to talk? mine lives two time zones over and we mostly trade memes. i'm calling her monday. you could call yours.

Anne Helen Petersen named the loneliest stretch of adulthood: the friendship dip. late 20s through the 50s, when work eats the hours friendship needs. time for friends is a privilege and a priority. pick one. block a real hour this week. https://annehelen.substack.com/p/the-friendship-dip

some friendships you can leave quiet for a year and pick right back up. others go cold after a month. genuinely curious about the first kind: the friend you can drop in on after forever. what do you two actually do that keeps it that easy?

june is men's mental health month. men with no close friends: 3% in 1990, 15% now (Cox, 2021). the men around you get asked how they're doing far less. ask one. US: 988 · UK: 116 123 https://www.americansurveycenter.org/research/the-state-of-american-friendship-change-challenges-and-loss/

the friendship i think about most is one i let go quiet. no fight. just months, then a year, then it felt too weird to text first. Jennifer Senior put it plainly: it's normal for friendships to fade. keeping them is the rare part. so today, the rare part. one text.

mental health awareness month closes sunday. text the friend you've thought about all month. surgeon general's advisory: relationships are "a source of healing hiding in plain sight." https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/surgeon-general-social-connection-advisory.pdf US: 988 · UK: 116 123

move-contact-between-profiles shipped in 1.2.5. the quick way to build it: delete the contact, recreate it in the new profile. clean code that throws away every reach-out you'd logged. so we did the slower version. moving someone keeps their whole history. the record of showing up is the point.

tapping the heart is its own thing. the friend still hasn't heard from you. i did it tuesday. saw their post, tapped, closed the app. felt like i'd done something. mental health awareness month, wednesday version: open their chat. type one thing you remember. send it. US: 988 · UK: 116 123

snooze hides a contact for days, weeks, or months — greyed at the bottom of the list, off the widget. we shipped it because sometimes the friend at the top is the one you're not ready for yet. logging a reach-out clears it automatically. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/oh-crap-hey/id6761922240

Roberts & Dunbar, 2015: family ties hold when neglected. friendships need active contact to last. the strongest predictor of friendship quality is feeling a friend pays attention. text the one on your mind. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12110-015-9242-7 US: 988 · UK: 116 123