There are a couple of people I’m really sad I didn’t get to see this weekend. One in particular, I’ve been calling every other day for about four weeks to talk about moving but he hasn’t called back at all.
I’m now processing the sense of change. My best friend, daisynerd, lives in Holland. As she wrote on a comment here this weekend, sometimes it’s hard for us to coordinate and really chat. My other two close friends are in Melbourne, and in September, one of them is moving to New York.
I’ve already been through that ‘moving cities’ loss of friends, people I had lunch with weekly who suddenly never called, people I never called. And also the people who lived here that I expected to be friends with and it just didn’t turn out, people who moved down after I did where I was thrilled to see them but they’d changed, I’d changed, we just didn’t mesh any more.
I’m hesitant to have expectations about SF. I’m looking forward to stepping into the wonderful landscape that mizchalmers describes (mostly as yatima_feed) but can’t predict whether we’ll be friends as we were or how I’ll fit in with her amazing crowd. I know jetspeaks from incredibly brief encounters in Melbourne and then again in Berkeley last year. We’ve wanted to get to know each other better, but haven’t had the chance. Will we become close? And then there’s thorfinn‘s friend, anthologie who I’ve started to know online; who knows whether that will translate into a real-life thing. Apart from anything else, I won’t actually be in “the city” but in commuter distance. Will that hour or so turn out to be more difficult to bridge than the timezone difference to Holland? Will I just join a local film appreciation society and meet new people? Will I turn to you, the ephemeral flickers of online comfort, bonds that when well-tended turn strong like any other?
I think about this new global landscape, intricate webs of friendships across the world. Not enough time to keep up with everyone, choices and distinctions about how we will measure a relationship, Orkut even asks you to rate people “friend”, “acquaintance”. Livejournal has layers and layers I can use and do use to draw circles of trust and interest around people: these ones will care about my magazine news; these ones won’t judge me when I’m filled with self-doubt.
I randomly picked a card out of an “inspirations” deck at the chiropractor this morning. It said “I am willing to change” and on the back talked about letting go of negative thoughts and moving towards the positive.
I am stepping into the unknown. I am willing to change.