Creating My New Social Circle

The main reason I initially wanted to move to Bloomington instead of staying in Atlanta upon my return from The Netherlands was that the deep social circle I was lacking so greatly in The Netherlands (especially until my last few months there) would have been most easily remedied with my friends from IU that still live and study in Bloomington. Although this IS true, I had given too little credit to my old contacts in Atlanta. See, during my undergrad years being in my long-term relationship with Julie, I managed to push away virtually all of my friends from high school, while simultaneously being content enough with my insular relationship with her that I didn't make many new friends, ultimately leaving me a bit friendless post-breakup. So, when I thought about returning to Atlanta, I just saw my hometown as a sort of past friendships graveyard (with a few exceptions) with very little promise over anything greater.

All this said, once I decided to stay here (mainly for professional and financial reasons), I took it upon myself to try to reinsert myself into the social scene here, using Facebook as my main tool. In a way, I almost treated the whole thing like a giant friends-oriented dating process, sending old acquaintances from high school messages informing them that I had just returned from Europe and that I was trying to see who all was still around the Atlanta-area, concluding my message with a simple (and intentionally ambiguous) "we should catch up sometime." This left the ball in their court: if they thought I meant we should just update one another via email, we could do that, but if they thought I meant we should get drinks sometime, that was also possible.

So, I went on many a first-date-like drink get-togethers with a bunch of old classmates, and just like real dating, by the time the night was over, you could usually tell with whom you felt a connection and with whom you didn't. Granted, now that I've started dating Candace, I haven't had the vast amounts of free time I had earlier to just go out with random friends from high school, but there are certainly a number of people I reconnected with over these past few months that I am looking forward to catching up with soon. Ultimately, this whole plan worked quite well, and now I feel very connected to what's going on here in my unexpectedly exciting hometown.