"When I was working as an OT in nursing homes we were told the two things that best predicted how much longer someone was going to live were (1) how far they could walk (2) how many people they interacted with in a day. I read an article a few weeks ago about how people, men in particular, don't have many friends any more. Part of this is because of the decline in participation in social activities such as clubs and church attendance, and part seems due to shifts in how we spend free time. I actually only have one -real- friend and that's my wife. In the past I've mostly held jobs where I traveled between locations a lot, such as being a pharmaceutical salesman. I knew a lot of people in a lot of places, but had no real friends because I would only spend a few hours at most in those facilities, and most were over an hour away. My current job is still like that to a degree and add in I'm dealing with a different social class. I do belong to my local camera club, but the members are mostly solitary cats. While we share an interest in photography none seem willing to go out with me at night to photo trains.
I used to have a buddy to go hunting with, but then he got remarried, gained a lot of weight, and I haven't seen him in years. So I hunt alone. I spend my weekends driving around the region taking photos of many different things. I am constantly interacting with many groups of people, but often they live over 100 miles away and I only see them seasonally. I'm a fringe member of many groups. Still, I can easily talk to just about anyone I come across and have interesting conversations with them. I did that yet again today with the ice fishermen out on the lake. Last week it was motorcycle racers on another frozen lake in another state. My wife and I get along extremely well and I'm on good terms with my two sons. Other than my wife I have no actual close friends, but I can honestly say I am happy.
I'm perfectly content to spend hours sitting in the dark along railroad tracks by myself waiting for a train to come, or days walking across desolate prairie with my rifle on my shoulder during antelope season.
Kent in SD"
Walking has contributed to the massive fall in my already small car usage: where I'd drive to pick up some bread, I now walk and only drive if it's for something too heavy and bulky such as four eight-litre bottles of drinklng water. I guess the average day sees a 45 mins walk in the morning to go check out the mail, have a coffee and perhaps make a snap or not; in the afternoon it's usually about a 90 mins walk down to the sea, along the marina and maybe - or maybe not - another coffee and back home. I can manage that without getting tired - in winter - but in summer I have to worry about the sunshine. Makes me feel like I have a Dracula complex!
I interact with very few people during the day, especially not with expats, with whom there is hardly anything to share if one does not drink anymore.
My wife was also my only absolute friend, from when she was fifteen. She used to have a small circle of girlfriends who were young mothers at the same time, and I think she benefitted a lot fom those friendships, especially when she aborted her one attempt to rejoining the ranks of the chemistry people; I think she stuck it for a year, but her absence started having a bad effect on the rest of us so she called it a day. In compensation, she and her friends played a lot of tennis and went swimming quite a lot too; how she could do all that and still have meals ready for the kids at lunchtime and for us all in the evening was an amazing feat of multitasking!
We both had good neighbours when we came here to Spain, perhaps because we were all first owners and that gave a shared sense of communal responsibilty and it was a new adventure that we were all sharing. As we were the youngest here by a long shot, I suppose we did bring a kind of more youthful vibe; all of us had reasonable disposable income and did a lot of party-going for a while; then, we woke up to the realisation that we had not retired, and that I still needed to find work and keep existing work alive, and we just stopped going to most of those social events. You could have been drunk every day before 13.00 hrs had you wanted to: cocktail parties were all the rage. However, over the years, we did get very close to a few couples and inevitably, one or the other partner died, and the last one standing would drift back to family in the UK.
I think that, as for you, photography can be a kind of marker for the self-contained soul. However, there are photographers who are the opposite, and constantly network. How much real friendship exists in such a network I can't say.
Rob
