Grateful for a whimsical turn, the looming threat of a 45 minute delay in traffic and my “favorited” places on google maps that led me to 200 of these beautiful, tiled steps depicting the names of the neighbors and various takes on the cosmos. Thank you to the random girl who captured this moment for me. Also – while I do really enjoy doing things on my own, I’m starting to wish that Ihad more of a community in this place I’ve called home for almost 8 years. The majority of my close friends moved away after college and while I am grateful for the long distance love, I’m realizing that unlike college or work where people are forced together by mutual participation,
the “real world” doesn’t do a very good job allowing adults to just make friends. I notice it daily – there’s a hesitance to genuinely appreciate aspects of another person lest you come across as creepy, there’s a terror of being perceived as desperate or trying too hard to enter a clique and there’s a very strong clamp on any attempt to just organically and curiously get to know people in our given worlds (that isn’t “networking” or “dating”). I’m not sure why that is but it seems to be a common phenomenon and quickly relegated to “adulting”. I’m not sure when or why #nonewfriends became a thing; I always thought it was a joke. But the longer I’ve been here in the capacity of a professional, the faster I’m realizing that our circles can easily run small because of ridiculous lofty expectations of other human beings and sheer inertia; we can cling on to college friends and work buddies but what about the rest of the damn city? When did they go off limits? When did “getting drinks” become the only way to socialize? When did the world become Tinder, where we take a single look at a person, make an assumption and say nah? And at what age did it suddenly become weird to do new things with new people in your home city?
To that effect, if anyone knows of people or is a person in the Bay Area who is/are interested in going on completely random, very unplanned, generally food centered adventures, I’m all ears and would love to share my home with you.