Hi there. For the past couple of years I have been transitioning to simple living. It all started for me after doing some long bicycle touring trips and living in a foreign country for a year. It gave me the distance I needed to reflect on contemporary, modern living. I now own my own home (no mortgage), my mode of transportation (bicycles) am debt-free and have enough in my retirement accounts to fully retire at the regular retirement age. I work for pay about 20 hours a week (sometimes less). I am in my early 30's and single.
I really love this lifestyle. I've never felt more content. What I seem to have is a day-to-day contentment that I've never really experienced in my life. It just feels good to be alive. I wake up each day excited about life.
My only real dilemma is that I find it very hard to meet people of a similar inclination, especially people my age. I have a lot of friends, but most of them are acquaintances, not close friends. I enjoy social activities but have not been able to develop deeper friendships. I imagine that the reasons are many: (1) for a lot of people socializing and spending tons of money go hand-in-hand; (2) most people want to schedule social events weeks in advance, and I like to keep my days largely unscheduled; (3) a lot of modern relationships require constant, superficial texting, and I'm not into that; (4) I miss a lot of pop culture references, because I don't watch TV and limit what media I take in. Etc., etc.
So, I suppose my question is this: how have people who transitioned to simple living cultivated friendships in their towns or cities? I live in a city of about one million people, so there's no lack of people here. I've thought about maybe starting a Meetup group. Has anybody tried that? How did it go?
Thanks,
Sarah
Submitted February 03, 2019 at 11:15AM by SarahRuthJansen http://bit.ly/2MOOR2W
