This last January I moved back home with my parents.
This has been excellent for my relationship with my Mom and Dad, as well as my youngest sister, who was home for the summer. I'm interacting with them more, getting to feed them, talking to them, showing them things that I'm into. And I'm getting to know them as adult people who are neat to hang out with as well as my parents.
This has made a bunch of friendships that were in person, and are now long distance, harder to maintain. Luckily, I already had this whole postcard project going. But, and I keep meaning to write up a post about this, sending people mail makes them feel more connected to me, and does less to make me feel connected to other people.
(I mail out, at last count, 39 postcards a month or so. I own, at last count, somewhere on the order of 400 postcards. There are around 100 postcards in a pound?)
I've also started making friends with a bunch of people my Mom's age or older, because of where I've been volunteering. Volunteering has been a huge good thing because it gets me out having physical human contact. I do a bunch of online socialization, and too much out and about with people is hard, but I do feel like I need to get out and interact with people who are not family sometimes too.
And, distance hasn't been quite as hard as I expected? I don't feel like I've lost friends anyway. But, I think that I've been making an effort not to.
family/friends/distance/postcards
This has been excellent for my relationship with my Mom and Dad, as well as my youngest sister, who was home for the summer. I'm interacting with them more, getting to feed them, talking to them, showing them things that I'm into. And I'm getting to know them as adult people who are neat to hang out with as well as my parents.
This has made a bunch of friendships that were in person, and are now long distance, harder to maintain. Luckily, I already had this whole postcard project going. But, and I keep meaning to write up a post about this, sending people mail makes them feel more connected to me, and does less to make me feel connected to other people.
(I mail out, at last count, 39 postcards a month or so. I own, at last count, somewhere on the order of 400 postcards. There are around 100 postcards in a pound?)
I've also started making friends with a bunch of people my Mom's age or older, because of where I've been volunteering. Volunteering has been a huge good thing because it gets me out having physical human contact. I do a bunch of online socialization, and too much out and about with people is hard, but I do feel like I need to get out and interact with people who are not family sometimes too.
And, distance hasn't been quite as hard as I expected? I don't feel like I've lost friends anyway. But, I think that I've been making an effort not to.