I’m 27 and for almost half of my life I’ve been living in various big cities. I’ve been observing a rising level of social anxiety in me and I was attributing it to just simply getting older and less socially active due to decreasing number of regular contacts.

I also had that presumption that everyone has their own active goals and so I would do my best to compress each social interaction as much as humanly possible to avoid taking too much time from that person.

Now I finally returned to village life and the so much slower everyday pace is just getting into my head. You’re just rambling around, greeting people passing you by, some will want to interact with you, after some time you initialize the interactions yourself. You’re just taking things slow, enjoying being a part of this community.

And it translates to the usual conversations too. I feel like I’m becoming so much more talkative. Smalltalk is no longer a chore, but rather a nice and refreshing activity.

  • varyingExpertise@feddit.orgEnglish
    8·
    10 days ago

    I lived in the city and moved into the country side when I was 40. I’m never going back. I’m a volunteer firefighter, I know someone who can do something in every trade, I can see my neighbors but I don’t have to because land is cheap and the fence is far away. People need each other occasionally and let each other be.

    I feel that the whole aversion against village life is stronger in people that want to consume the lifestyle without contributing. Easy said, one needs to have something one can contribute. I build the weirdest problem solving shit with embedded controllers and lora, I help wire new things into our firetruck, I calculate photovoltaics for people, so that’s easy for me to say. I’ve found a niche where a nerd can fit into the village ecosystem, I’m not going back.