We write for different reasons. To express ourselves. To share our thoughts, our delights, our emotions. To reach out to others who are like-minded. To seek friendship. To satisfy a need within ourselves.
I might add to combat loneliness. Living in a very rural area with few neighbours can be very isolating. I found it particularly so when my children were small. Once they went to school, they were picked up by the school taxi as we lived more than 3 miles from the school and so I didn't even get the chat at the school gates. Friends I had made when they were at Mother and Toddler group moved away. A dear friend moved to England because of her husband's job. My closest friends now are over an hour away by car. A short conversation with a neighbour as you are passing is not quite the same thing as a friendship. Friends from "back home" rarely visit as you are so far away. E-mails replace snail mail. The telephone is a lifeline.
Now my girls have left home I am feeling even more at a loss: the pivotal meaning of my life lessened by the family unit halving. I am hoping when we move that we will be able to resume our social life again, be able to meet new people and have a social interaction once more. It sounds like I'm feeling sorry for myself, which I'm not - it's the price we paid for moving to a beautiful area and having all our hearts desired. We have been very happy here, but our needs have changed, and now it is beginning to feel like a life-sentence and I grow slightly resentful when things go wrong.
House-hunting carries on, still just at the stage of sorting out which things on our long list of wants we can compromise on, and which are set in stone. Living closer to a village is one of them. No more conversations with cows for me . . . Hah! Conversations with a computer instead!!!
