I didn’t understand or prioritize this nearly enough. It’s something I think about a lot.

That's one thing I'm glad I did recognize for myself early on; even when I moved away from DC, my goal was always to move back, because this is where my closest friends are. And my family is within a few hours' drive, too, so I'm lucky.

I do really think about how to maintain connection as I age -- my goal is to be like my 87 y.-o. aunt who plays bridge several times a week, still goes to her beach house for several months out the year where she's built a whole other community + host various and sundry of her friends and family, and has good ties with her kids, me, her other nieces and nephews, grandkids, etc... and lots of her friends kids, too -- she's a multi-generational icon! (I mean, I don't have a beach house or kids, but, you know... I took a stab at learning bridge a while back!)

Anyway -- she's 30 years older than I am, and I'm 30 years older than my niece, so I have a goal of maintaining my relationship with my niece just the way my aunt did with me. She's definitely one of the most important relationships in life, and her perspective has been invaluable to me over the years.

My life is too much structure, not enough community. This is not, especially, a friendly place(Or maybe these aren't my people. Which feels greedy to say because my family is here and neighbors do help me out, but we're in different places--it's not going to get beyond chit-chat.) I think people come here to escape what came before, not to build things.(and, when I was young, it was cheap to live. Now, not so much.)

Not that I don't try...but Zoom just either isn't the same or it's all work. There's this thing that my supervisor says every Sunday about "reveling in being surrounded by people who get it," Which, you know, five years ago felt easier because a. I was just eager to talk to somebody who didn't know where my freckles are, right? and 2.I am relatively surrounded by anti-vax sentiment here, so, like, in that sense they did "get it" more. But, now, affectionate teasing of him aside, I find myself thinking "That thing that he describes...have I ever truly felt that, ever?" and I have to say mostly not. Maybe for a little while in either my biggest Crip Power period(Now that I'm not in that, I can say I was annoying and fully overcompensated in the manner of every convert, ever. As sorry as I am that we didn't fully change the world for summer '93) or in the earlier days of my time as a Buffista, when we all had more time to play. And I really do like the PDA people, but they know and like Me as Activist and they, you know, live with the other parts of my package and personality, not really that they love them. They want the machine, the one who pretends she likes showing up ten weekends in a row.

But it's something I preach all the time - proximity matters.

The changes in the city and the pandemic fucked me for this one. A critical mass of my conveniently local friends moved either moderately inconveniently far away (driveable for dinner or brunch plans, but a pain in the ass) or hope-they-have-a-guest-room far away. Combine that with the kids graduating high school and parent friends thus going empty nester, and we don't get out much these days.

I do have one good friend who's just slightly inconveniently far away, but our socializing has to work around her chemo schedule, and we have parent friends two and a half blocks away (their kid, like ours, is still in the house and going to the local community college) who we hang out with from time to time, so it's not complete isolation, but it's a lot more isolation than I had going into 2020 (ah, back when we were the ones planning to move!), I tell you what.

Timelies all!

Tired. This was not helped by having a number of nights in a row where I woke up coughing several times. I end up being wobbly in the morning. (Thing I learned: Sit down when putting on slippers in the morning. Subsequent thing I learned: If you are falling, do not grab the partially broken earring rack that isn't attached to the wall. Someday I will find where all those little post earrings went...)