Back when I worked at a place I hated it was always difficult to return from time off. Mondays were hard. It was harder when I returned from a long vacation. It was mainly hard because I was returning to a terrible place working for a terrible person.
I have discovered, though, that circumstances can still make it hard to return to the real world after time away.
When I was in Kentucky I was rarely alone. I would have a few minutes of alone time in the morning. I had some alone time when I drove by myself to and from my hometown. I had lunch alone that day. I had a little alone time here and there while my brother was at work and my sister-in-law was busy.
I now have the complete opposite.
My daughter is still in Greece. My son has his own place. My wife works from the time she gets out of bed until 6 or so and then goes for a walk. I’m alone for about 14 hours every day. when I am not scheduled at the barn.
I do like alone time, but I would like a happy medium between never having alone time and having 14 hours or more of alone time. The transition both ways is difficult.
When I was in Kentucky, a friend from high school commented on my post about being home asking if I was around for the weekend. She then made plans for us to get together before I was gone. When we met her and her husband in my hometown we ran into several other people I knew from high school.
When I am home, no friends reach out to get together When I go out at home I rarely run into people I know.
It would be nice to have more of a small-town atmosphere where I live. Or friends.
I love being home, but the transition from being around people and the small-town atmosphere to the aloneness and lack of community in the DC suburbs is jarring.
The World's Common Tater 
What are you going to do to change your situation? There are many ways to meet new people. Join a club. Take a walk. Just do it!
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I joined a community book club. I volunteer at the barn three days a week. I go for at least one walk every day. I do food deliveries for my church once a week. It keeps me active, but I’m bad at making connections
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Keep at it. Pray for God to bring some new powple int your life.
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Making friends as we get older is so hard…
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Especially when you were and at it when you were young
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My lifeline is still my three best friends from college. I have two really close friends from the city. Mostly I have activity buddies here, if that makes sense
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That makes sense to me
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I understand how you feel after moving away from a town I moved to after college graduation. I was surrounded by people I knew. Now that we’re in Arizona I go back and forth over wanting to be alone and wanting more of a social life. The people in our neighborhood are very social. We could be going out with people three or four times a week. It’s too much, especially since these are new friends, it’s not so relaxing.
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Yeah. A balance is hard to find
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Funny thing Tater, I’ve just written a post (although still not decided if I’ll put it out yet) about belongingness. I think part of it can relate to where we live, especially when used to somewhere different, or having moved away from somewhere which had the right level of easy connection for you. I totally get that the suburbs don’t suit you and understand why you miss Kentucky when you’re away.
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I wrote a while back about a sense of belonging and how I realized I loved certain tv shows because they reminded me they belonging I once had
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That’s what makes my new country life easier to deal with. I can have as much alone time as I want, since I live in a separate house on my sister’s property. When I need human contact, it’s right across the breezeway. Out here, I’m not finding new friends. Fortunately, I’m not that far from my friends (about an hour’s drive), so we do see each other from time to time. This doesn’t bode well for me, though, when I move across country in a couple of years or so.
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Now that I don’t go into a actual office anymore, I don’t have any friends or people to hang out with socially. I never realized until now how much I needed that workplace to have a fulfilling social life. It provided daily access and convenience to others and we all had our work in common. I get sad that it’s gone sometimes. There were people I hated there, but also people that I really liked.
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Same here. I also seem to have lost the one small group from work I saw outside of work for years. Now, nothing
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