Where I Have Been

Back in the San Francisco Bay Area for work. It was a quick, yet long trip. 5 days for 3 days worth of work. I am still figuring out how to do this sanely. It can be done; it can be done. Working 12 hours in a day while there is probably not the way to do it. Running on 4 hours sleep a night is not the way to do it.

I get to spend time with one friend or household of friends per visit, it seems. My dear pals, R and S, put me up for 2 nights. I told them it was rejuvenating. S said, "Yes, we are juveniles dressed up in old people's clothes." She's really very stylish, but you get her drift. I got a lot of laughs out of the visit. Now that is the way to do it.

I picked up sushi for dinner and brought home fermented soybean maki. R told me that the Japanese love it and eat it for anything that ails them. We turned up our noses if not churned our stomaches. I cannot recommend the stuff--the risks of a very authentic sushi house.

So many people, so little time. I never really realized how many friends I had in the Bay Area until I left. Part of the issue is my reticence to say yes to friendship. I tend to assume people already have full plates and don't really want to see me. Or I am too busy dealing with my own misery to take time out for other people. Or I count people as colleagues, but don't reach out to be friends.

I spent a lot of time on the road, too, of course, in the Bay Area, commuting. From Bowling Alone: "Every ten minutes of commuting results in ten per cent fewer social connections. Commuting is connected to social isolation, which causes unhappiness." I am citing the book (which I have not read) from a quote in an article in the New Yorker. My data probably fits, though how causality could have been teased out, I am not sure.

Thank you, Deb of Family Dinner, for prompting me to write. Now there is an example of one social connection that I have kept through the phone and IMs and email and blogs. She was a talking head on a computer at my 50th birthday. She is a very close friend, and we started up face to face twenty some years ago. She's not the only dear friend at a distance. This is another phenomenon, probably well-researched: women who bond in their twenties, and stay friends while moving around the country. That's what I hope to do with my Bay Area friends. Stay friends.

Image from MOMA.org, exhibition of Kirchner's Berlin Street paintings.