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Should more of us be moving to live near friends?
31–40 of 517 posts
Re: Should more of us be moving to live near friends?
#32This is great advice if you replace "friends" with "family"
Not always With family, the further I get, the happier I am. They are what they are, and I can’t say I’m that interested in it. I’ve replaced that with friends I can actually count on.
Found family is just as valid as family.
For those of us from toxic homes, found family is more important. The LGBTQ community was decades ahead of us on this.
Re: Should more of us be moving to live near friends?
#33Weird that the article frames friends as being constant in life and your career/house/neighborhood/kids' schools/community as totally flexible when practically speaking it's the other way around. It is normal to move away from people you formed bonds with in high school and college. If you are lonely the solution isn't to uproot your life and go after them, but to form new bonds with people who are around you right n…
Nailed it.
I was going to say that I think more of us should be figuring out how to make connections with the people in the communities we live in.
But I do think moving might make sense for lots of people (maybe including me), in order to have a better local community. Instead of moving to be close to past or current friends, I might suggest we should be moving to places where people are like-minded about valuing a tight knit community, then making friends with those people.
These places seem to be very few and far between, though, and it's hard (impossible?) to find them on Zillow.
Re: Should more of us be moving to live near friends?
#34Yes of course. Intentional communities of like minded people are the alternative to atomarisation of strangers living next to strangers with fake smiles and talking behind the back as the standard social interaction. Easier said then done, though in most cases, but worth it wherever possible.
Have you spent time around intentional communities? It's possible you're taking a looser meaning of the phrase than I am, but Intentional Communities have no shortage of toxicity and drama, especially since by their nature these communities filter for people for whom the 'default world' didn't work.
That's not to say the concept is bad, but it's very very easy for even a good group to rapidly devolve, the clearer heads quietly move away.
In the discussion of communities, I've come across the idea that it's better to organize around a purpose - say a farm cooperative or (historically) a religious cause. Sharing beliefs (being Like Minded) may not be enough for long term cohesion. Can you imagine living with your Blue sky cohort?
Re: Should more of us be moving to live near friends?
#35Great idea - to make this happen we either need to solve the housing affordability crisis in high-density areas, or spread job opportunities around to lower-density areas. My friends are in a diverse set of fields, finding a place with jobs for all of them isn't feasible right now.
Why not remote work? Why should a few cities reap all the benefits of these jobs? Spread the wealth!
Re: Should more of us be moving to live near friends?
#36I would love to, but I come from a place where intellectual pursuits are not valued, so I would lose out on that front if I moved back. I’m the type who needs to always be learning. So I would always need to be in a big city. Alain Bertaud, the urbanist, recently said, “the big contribution of cities is randomness.” And he continues: “You don't know what to expect. You don't know who you will meet. And, it's precisel…
> I would love to, but I come from a place where intellectual pursuits are not valued, so I would lose out on that front if I moved back.
I used to think along similar lines. But I haven't found moving out of the city to be subtractive of my 'intellectual life'. If anything, it has been complementary - due to being grounded in mainstream experience again that I lost touch with in the city.
That said, I've very consciously kept those former social connections alive (I'm an hour away), as I still need semi-regular social interaction with people much smarter than me.
Re: Should more of us be moving to live near friends?
#37Re: Should more of us be moving to live near friends?
#38I would love to, but I come from a place where intellectual pursuits are not valued, so I would lose out on that front if I moved back. I’m the type who needs to always be learning. So I would always need to be in a big city. Alain Bertaud, the urbanist, recently said, “the big contribution of cities is randomness.” And he continues: “You don't know what to expect. You don't know who you will meet. And, it's precisel…
I’m not sure I’d draw any general conclusions from your experience. It’s a rather broad brush.
I grew up in a very intellectual city (Waterloo) with a back yard with big wood fences and we just became experts climbing them, venturing from yard to yard collecting half a dozen kids. We’d bike all over, including to the universities (though Laurier campus didn’t feel interesting).
I moved to a very blue collar small city and it feels pretty much the same. My kids are bringing back a lot of nostalgia for me, I’ve made a lot of friends at the curling club, and I’m mentoring a local high school’s robotics team (one difference: I’ve learned that young farmers are incredible engineers).
I wouldn’t suggest that my experience is normal either, though.
Re: Should more of us be moving to live near friends?
#39I would love to, but I come from a place where intellectual pursuits are not valued, so I would lose out on that front if I moved back. I’m the type who needs to always be learning. So I would always need to be in a big city. Alain Bertaud, the urbanist, recently said, “the big contribution of cities is randomness.” And he continues: “You don't know what to expect. You don't know who you will meet. And, it's precisel…
I think it’s likely folly to think that the big city is only place where intellectual pursuit and learning can happen.
I often tell people that living in a rural area is much like living in the city, but living next to the city is like neither.
Re: Should more of us be moving to live near friends?
#40I would love to, but I come from a place where intellectual pursuits are not valued, so I would lose out on that front if I moved back. I’m the type who needs to always be learning. So I would always need to be in a big city. Alain Bertaud, the urbanist, recently said, “the big contribution of cities is randomness.” And he continues: “You don't know what to expect. You don't know who you will meet. And, it's precisel…
> I would love to, but I come from a place where intellectual pursuits are not valued, so I would lose out on that front if I moved back.
This part of choosing where to live is so important and hard to articulate. I remember when I moved from small town to small town, then finally out to Silicon Valley. The first thing I noticed was the billboards by the side of 101. They were about programming frameworks, iPhones, hackerspaces, development tools and so on... Where I came from, the billboards along the highway said things like "Don't Shake Your Baby" and "Jesus Hates Sinners" and "Lift Kits For Your Truck". The vibe of the Valley and the general interest in intellectual things made me think for the first time in my life "I'm among my own people now!"
Since then, as we all know, the vibe has changed, and I've moved away, but for a very brief special period of time, my quality of life was greatly enhanced just by being in this nexus of people who's values and interests aligned with my own.