Comment by cosmic_cheese | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cosmic_cheese | Hacker News Reader

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I’ve been cognizant of this for several years now, but almost immediately after I began to act on it, the pandemic hit and threw it all into disarray.

Since then I’ve moved which has enabled a massive CoL reduction which is great, but at the same time I’m not sure this is where I want to be for even the next 5-10 years and so I’ve been resistant to putting down roots. Needing to drive to do anything also doesn’t help, as I find driving on anything but practically empty roads unpleasant.

There may be a pedestrian/cyclist-friendly city with great public transportation in my future, and so if I make a point to go out and do things consistently it’ll probably be there.

> so I’ve been resistant to putting down roots

Question about this. My partner is similar -- if we aren't going to be somewhere "forever" they are hesitant to do any "work" to socialize etc. because "we are leaving soon". In what ways do you perceive "putting down roots" as somehow unappealing if you don't know how long you'll be there?

(I almost said "how long you'll be around" -- but none of us know that, so really the question is even more pointed!)

Mostly, it boils down to how I’ve traditionally been terrible at maintaining connections to people who aren’t in my immediate vicinity (and conversely, most people I’ve met have also not been great at this). I can count the number of post-move non-immediate-family that I either stay connected to or don’t need to stay constantly connected to because picking up where we left off years ago is effortless on a single hand. It feels bad to make a bunch of friends that I probably won’t be able to keep if I move.

Other than that, if it’s likely that I’ll want/need to move some time in the near-ish future, it doesn’t make sense to build a situation that would make that future move more difficult (emotionally or otherwise) than it needs to be. Having a sizable social circle established prior to moving introduces room for messy hesitance and regret.

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