Ok, this is weird.
I’ve moved to a place where I have dozens of friends.
This wasn’t unintentional. It’s the main reason Sarah chose this for "her turn" to move us, and ironically enough, researchers have found that happiness and longevity is linked to spending time with friends. But it’s definately a new experience. In DC I would have counted maybe a dozen friends and they were all in seperate circles so they never made plans together.
Here’s they all know each other and do things together. By the way that includes showing up in our hospital room when our son was in for tests. That was truly touching, and probably wouldn’t have happened in DC unless we were in the hospital for a full week.
I’m suddenly juggling art openings to attend in support of friends and birthdays to remember and parents funerals to send flowers to and all that sort of things. It is all-consuming, but it’s really, really nice. I end up seeing these people pretty much every week. I had totally forgot what this was like.
In DC my ability to make friends at work was completely removed because "I was the boss". And it’s such a transitory town that friends I made were isolated from others, and often left town for other jobs and lives.
The last time I can remember this experience was when I was in NY over ten years ago. Imagine going ten years without a sizable group of friends. This must explain part of why I became such a recluse. (There’s also the fact that I’m a borderline introvert.)
Weird. There’s a whole set of associated manners I’m re-learning as well.