No friends

My wife always jokes that I have no friends. I always reply that my friends are all online now.

But she’s not wrong, either.

The real life friends I actually do meet and want to meet face-to-face, have all relocated. Friends I can just count with one hand. So I don’t have coffees, hang out, or go for dinner with friends when in Singapore. In most of daily life, practically speaking, I have no friends.

I thought it was just my life stage.
A passing phase perhaps.
Busy with children. Busy with family.
Everyone’s this way, in Singapore, anyway.
I’m also constantly tired, so not feeling up for meeting up.
And I’m an introvert, anyway.

But somehow, Chiangmai is teaching me something else.

It’s not that I have no friends. I am simply living in the wrong place.

My friends and to-be friends are all here now. People I can connect with. People whom I share similar values, about life, parenting, education, living. Who are all a bit (or a lot) off from the normal factory production line. Outliers. Unusual. Different. Non-mainstream.

When in the right place, friends come to you, whether you like it or not. Life stage or not.
And I’m not the hermit-like, isolated, quiet-loving introvert I thought I was.

I was, quite simply, in the wrong place.

Crazy how much that affects our social lives, and our own perception of our soclal self.

Wild.