mtbc | Moving away from friends

At work in Dundee when I stroll across main campus it is now full of students. Presumably the freshmen are settled in and have made friends, expressed themselves through the medium of poster purchases, and adopted a new routine. It got me thinking back to my own time at Cambridge (England^*) as a student. I spent quite a lot of time interacting with friends instead of studying and I don't regret that at all. Those friendships still mean a lot to me.

Since graduating, then moving around a lot over later years, I haven't had much in the way of close friendships with people actually somewhat colocated with me. That I do regret, but only isasmuch as I couldn't both have my cake and eat it. While there is much about my life I wish were different, the choices I did make provided me with experience, and experiences, I'd not now wish to trade.

Still, I have a clear memory of much of my time with friends decades ago, and a handful of subsequent experiences have revealed to me that I'm unusual in so naturally putting relationships on pause: at least, in a way that I can comfortably step right back into them. In how I am with people, I have changed little since graduating, but I get the impression that people expect more initial awkwardness and I thus wonder how time might have changed them. I am often guessing what people might think or say about something in my life even though I have now not much seen them for a very long time. It may be relevant that my personal memories are generally rather loosely timestamped.

In general I am very happy to see people again and learn about how they are and what has been going on, it is really just the circumstance of living far from them that keeps me quite literally away. Returning to the Cambridge area would partially solve that. There is much to attract me there but, goodness, partly due to local council decisions, not the city itself. There were various nails in that supercilious Cambridge is full, go away coffin while we lived there but I think one of the last was making the road to the railway station open to taxis only, I could no longer drop off or pick up visitors in a private car. Columbus, OH, while hardly being a tourist destination, remains far closer to my heart, and there is a handful of people there too whom I miss.

^*It confuses the issue that I spent a couple of years working in Cambridge, MA, which is the main place I've bicycled; one of my colleagues at work there graduated from the University of Cambridge. In this journal entry I am not referencing time in Massachusetts. And, I've not stopped in Cambridge, OH, for much longer than to get gas.