I need community, and at present I lack it.
Although we’ve been in our new southern surrounds for two years now, I am not shocked that we’ve struggled to establish our new community. Moving into a new state, changing our lifestyle, quarantining through a pandemic… all legitimate and material headwinds.
Yes we have, will always have, our California community – and thank God for it because staying in-touch with them has been a bit of manna in this desert. We also have our family here in Florida, one of our primary motivations for being here, those connections buoying us greatly.
But, for me, at least, there is still “more” that I’ve yet to establish. The diversity and number of human outlets we had prior to the move is a gap in my current sense of community. Worse, this dearth has led me to become overly-reliant on what geographically-proximal relationships I do have, tapping them for more than they can be expected to give.
Being over-reliant on a very narrow set of personal relationships then causes me to be extra sensitive to normal relationship ebb-and-flow. With a multitude of outlets, temporary quiescence of any one is seamlessly absorbed by load-balancing into the remainder. Said another way, the bigger the community the more outlets available to “pick up slack” or “handle surge.” Just like an electric circuit has a load rating… perhaps so does any given person/person relationship. Pushing everything through the same channel is bound to burn it out.
Maybe this is part of getting older… an expected waning of community, at least in terms of pure numbers? I sort of imagine that’s so. Dunno, but I’m taking some concrete actions to “get involved,” to establish some additional outlets… new circuits…
With apologies to those I’m currently overloading, then… peace out.
Also written on this day...
- daddy's girl - 2010
- prince charlie - 2009
- a truly awesome way to spend an evening - 2006
- sleestak! - 2004