From Newsgroup: rec.sport.rowing

<div>A recent article in The Atlantic made the case for doing something that a lot of us \u2014 particularly those in our 30s and 40s, especially those whose careers (or whose partners\u2019 careers) have led us to live in places where we wouldn\u2019t necessarily choose to live \u2014 spending a lot of time thinking and dreaming about. Specifically: moving closer to your close friends.</div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div>download closer</div><div></div><div>Download: https://t.co/PFfFDkoDVk </div><div></div><div></div><div>\u201CSometime during the pandemic lockdowns, I began to nurture a fantasy,\u201D Adrienne Matei writes. \u201CWhat if I were neighbors with all of my friends? Every day, as I took long walks through North Vancouver that were still nowhere near long enough to land me at a single pal\u2019s doorstep, I would reflect on the potential joys of a physically closer network. Wouldn\u2019t it be great to have someone who could join me on a stroll at a moment\u2019s notice? Or to be able to drop by to cook dinner for a friend and her baby? How good would it be to have more spontaneous hangs instead of ones that had to be planned, scheduled, and most likely rescheduled weeks in advance?\u201D</div><div></div><div></div><div>So the vast majority of Americans actually live pretty close to their parents \u2014 either because the kids haven\u2019t moved far from home, or because parents have moved closer to their kids, either because they need more support, or because they want to be close to their grandkids and provide support. Not being within driving distance of your parents is largely a problem of the highly-educated dual-professional family.</div><div></div><div></div><div>Some people might look at the question of \u201CWhy don\u2019t you move closer to your friends?\u201D and answer: \u201CI don\u2019t know if I have any who actually merit moving closer.\u201D Friendships fade or never get off the ground, not because someone\u2019s an unlikeable person, but because no one (not you, not your friends, and especially not dudes) is encouraged past, oh, age 21 to put in the work to sustain this sort of friendship.</div><div></div><div></div><div>But that\u2019s not always the case. Maybe the friend group is all over the country or the world. You could move closer to one of those friends, and that would be cool, but maybe not enough \u2014 or, as a few people have told me, maybe you\u2019re scared you\u2019d move there and it\u2019d be a lot of pressure on your friend, or maybe they don\u2019t envision the same sort of intimacy as you do, or maybe you want to be the informal Aunt or Uncle or Relative to their kid and that\u2019s not in their plans. No home base, no strategy, so instead you just send around Zillow links of weird sprawling properties where you could all move together (but don\u2019t).</div><div></div><div></div><div>The same principle holds for rentals, particularly in places with extremely high costs (hello, broker fees) tacked onto the price of moving. (And if you say oh what about the pandemic, didn\u2019t more people move then? Nope, absolutely not). High-density urban neighborhoods would theoretically be the best place to build a super-close-proximity-intimate-friend-situation, but it\u2019s so expensive and cumbersome to move (and if you have rent control, forget it, you\u2019re never leaving) that it just doesn\u2019t happen. You can\u2019t move closer to your friends because having control over where you can move is, itself, a fantasy.</div><div></div><div></div><div>In industries where jobs are scarce, mobility is a privilege. In industries where jobs are hyper-scarce, it\u2019s outright impossible. You take what you get and the expected posture is gratitude. The pandemic has made remote options more viable but only slightly so. You might be the person whose job provides health insurance for your family, or your partner might be that person and their job is locked. Some people feel that they can\u2019t move for any reason, let alone to be closer to friends.</div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div>What I\u2019ve listed above are the primary roadblocks to moving closer to our friends \u2014 I\u2019m sure there are more, and complications and elaborations to what I\u2019ve described above, and I\u2019d love to see us talk more about them in the comments.</div><div></div><div></div><div>And so, a prompt for discussion: What would have to change, for you to move closer to the people who nourish you, who support you, who make your life better and easier in so many ways? Why does it still feel weird to buy a house together, or even just look for separate apartments close by? If you feel utterly immovable, why? What\u2019s holding you back, and what conversations do you have with yourself about when and whether that will change? </div><div></div><div> df19127ead</div>
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