"Keep in touch."

School's over. I've moved a few states away. I have a real job. It's getting harder to stay in touch in a time when it should be easier: I got Instant Messenger and a cell phone, a myspace.com account and a blog, an e-mail account and even a few stamps.

But it's hard to stay in touch. It's just downright hard. There's no other word I wanted to use in that sentence to describe how hard it is.

I mean, there's the whole "picking up the phone" action, which I've never been good at. I dislike talking on the phone. I've got my reasons.

E-mail takes time. Writing one could take only a few minutes, but if I'm in the mood to talk to The College Roommate, I know I won't get an e-response back for days.

Instant message? No. Too weird. I used to IM from Mom's house, typing really, really quietly so Mom wouldn't hear that I was still on the computer. I'm not 16 anymore, but I feel like it on IM.

Regular mail? Phssshtft. Right. I only mail Christmas cards and birthday cards. And the occasional bill. Grrr.

Myspace is fun, but it's not a comprehensive list of friends.

That brings me back to "doe." I'm gonna have to suck it up and admit that perhaps it's easier to be friends with someone when you share things: half of rent, for instance, or shared deadlines at the student newspaper. A house. A job. A common disgust with hipsters. (If by "disgust" I mean "jealousy" ...) An ex. A love of "Sex and the City." Whatever. It's just easier to stay friends when you have stuff in common. Stuff you can see. Stuff you both have, or stuff you both are (can you be "stuff"?) right now. Stuff you're going through.

I have all these memories in common with The Roommate; she and I have been friends since junior high. Shouldn't we be BFFs? Yeah. But it's weird now. I mean, I don't know how to say this ... but she's in Eastern Standard Time. Seriously. She watches her news at 11 p.m. You know what they say about people who watch their news at 11. (What?) They live in EST. (Ooh.)

I'm gonna try to still be BFFs. I care about her, I miss her a lot, I sometimes want nothing more than to come home and get into fake fights with her like I used to. But when it's 7 here, it's 8 there.

How do people do this? Or is "keep in touch" code for "we both like each other, but we know it's not going to be easy to be friends"? I don't know.