Visiting Friends

I miss people.

I’ve never been someone who travels in order to see a place. I usually travel to see a friend, or a couple of friends, who happen to live somewhere else.

Some people seem to have lots of friends. But making friends doesn’t come all that easily to me, so while I know lots of people, I don’t have all that many friends. And I always feel a sense of loss when a friend moves away.

So I tend to organize my vacations around seeing friends who have moved elsewhere.

Over the last few years I’ve thought about going to see a friend in Brooklyn and a friend in Canada, but I didn’t get around to it. Now I’m kicking myself.

When the pandemic is over, one thing that I expect will be different than before it started is that I won’t hesitate as much when I have a thought about going to visit someone. I’ll just go. Life is short, and the pandemic has demonstrated that there’s no way of knowing when going to see a friend suddenly won’t be an option any more. I’m lucky this time because not being able to go visit friends is a temporary condition; at some point, probably next year some time, most or all of the Covid-19 restrictions will be behind us.

But the next time it may not be temporary. The next time I’m not able to go visit a friend may because they’ve “shuffled off this mortal coil.” Or because I have. So no more procrastinating.