Your friends don’t need you to be perfect. They need you to text back on the day it actually matters.

Nobody is keeping score of your general availability. What gets remembered is the handful of days a year when something real was happening and you either replied or did not. Being a reliably good friend in the abstract is impossible and also not what is being asked. Being present on four or five specific days is achievable by anybody.

So it is worth knowing when those days are. The tryout, the results, the hospital day, the move, the first shift. Put them in your phone and reply on the day, even badly, because that is the entire requirement.