You can just show up

Staying connected can start to feel like another thing on your to-do list.

You should call your friend. Make plans. Find an evening when everyone is free. And then another week goes by.

Life gets busy. People move. Schedules stop lining up. Even people you really want to see can become people you keep meaning to see.

But staying connected doesn’t have to take a lot of effort.

You don’t have to perform

There’s ways of doing something together that don’t require you to be at your best. Playing together for example.

You don’t need an interesting story to tell, be entertaining, productive or in a great mood.

You can have a good day, a terrible day or no particular day at all.

You can just show up.

A game gives you something to do together without putting any pressure on the moment. You take your turn, they take theirs. You talk, laugh, complain about the dice or say nothing at all.

Backgammon is particularly good for this. You don’t need to fill the time with conversation. The game gives you a shared focus, while still leaving plenty of room to just be yourselves.

Show up whenever you have a minute

Backgammon also works surprisingly well when you don’t have time for a whole game at once.

With asynchronous play, you don’t have to be online at the same time. You don’t have to schedule a gaming session or finish a game in one sitting.

Make a move over breakfast. Your friend can play later. Come back when you have a few minutes. The game waits in between.

It might take an hour, a few days or longer. There’s no rush.

Small moments count

We tend to think of quality time as something that needs to be planned: a dinner, a weekend away, a long phone call.

But connection can happen in much smaller moments.

A message, a shared joke, a five-minute conversation, or a backgammon game that’s been going back and forth all week.

You don’t need the perfect moment. You don’t need to show up as the best version of yourself.

You can just show up and make a move.

Staying connected isn’t always about finding more time. It’s about making the little time you have count.

So if there’s someone you’ve been meaning to catch up with, start a game. Make a move. Give them something to come back to.