Quote from Downton Abbey\u2026didn\u2019t watch all of it, but I get the sentiment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I feel like my life has been divided into a few sections:
1. Growing up in LA, school, work, long distance relationship, marriage, and moving up to\u2026
2. The Bay Area for 12 years, buying our first house, mental health and work, involvement in church, developing relationships with those in the workplace\/church\/extended family, and ultimately leading to moving back to SoCal to…
3. Buying a house in Camarillo to be closer to family, working remotely, navigating how to take care of said family members when they\u2019ll need more care, making new friends in a new environment, getting plugged into a new church and learning how to balance our time\/energy\/money in a sustainable way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These sections of our life look a little distinct since they are in different locations, and they should. They are filled with different situations, life choices, peoples, etc, but\u2026I don\u2019t think that exactly means that they can\u2019t intersect. When I lived in SFV with my parents, I would come up to the Bay Area to visit Anson. When I was in the Bay Area, I would fly down to see my parents and friends like Gina, Cindy, Weber, Crescentia, and Junior. We now live in Camarillo, and while it’s still in SoCal, it’s a little bit away from where we grew up. If we want to see people, we will still have to drive to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If we lived in SFV, it would make it more convenient to see people that we knew\u2026but\u2026truthfully, we have grown apart from most people that we knew. I do think we made the right decision in moving here. SFV is just way too hot in the summer and we would be miserable for months every year. Camarillo has great weather, good infrastructure, is well run, MIGHT have a Costco someday, not as many people (and hope to keep it that way), and we honestly were able to buy our dream house. We\u2019ve looked on Redfin and no other house matches this one. We have made some friends in our new church in Thousand Oaks and don\u2019t always have to drive to TO since we\u2019ve been hosting our small group. Raymond, Steve\/Shirley, and James\/Char have visited us, and Cindy will be coming next week to stay over on the weekend. We\u2019ve met some Bay Area friends in LA (Eleanor\/Jeff, Yeh family, Emily\/Kevin, Jo-Ann), and are going to see Mark\/Jenn in a few weeks when they come to TO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is probably normal to drift away from people especially if you aren\u2019t able to live life together in the same place. I understand why Gary wants our small group to meet every week since he wants the group to have fellowship\/socialization and grow closer to each other\u2026but if you have those bonds, you don\u2019t necessarily have to see each other THAT much. And if you do that, it shrinks your social bandwidth for your other relationships, which I do NOT want to lose. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
When we do visit SFV, I\u2019ve made time to eat with Gina, Weber, and Crescentia. We are able to talk to people we knew at CCAC or New Life when we have visited, and I don\u2019t really see that changing in the near future. When we visited the Bay Area, we caught up with church friends, extended family, and coworkers. I\u2019m hoping that we can visit at least once every year or two. We\u2019ve had virtual meals with both sets of parents and Anson\u2019s extended family. Because of the rain this week, we did virtual meals with Randy\/Eva and Ruth\/Albert and were able to catch up with each other\u2019s lives and talk about some spiritual things to help spur one another on. One good thing that came out of COVID was a normalizing of virtual gatherings. We just need to have the intention to reach out and keep up our relationships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m probably rambling\u2026I guess to tie this in with the title of this post\u2026regardless of where we are in the present, whether in SFV, Santa Clara, or Camarillo, relationships with the people that matter to me are the memories that I want to cherish. Yes, it may take some work to keep them going, but isn\u2019t that how it should be? I don\u2019t have to wait for others to reach out, and it\u2019s not like no one has. There have been people who have come to see us even though we are a little further away, and technology has also made our world a little bit more accessible\u2026use it for good!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Quote from Downton Abbey\u2026didn\u2019t watch all of it, but I get the sentiment. I feel like my life has been divided into a few sections:1. Growing up in LA, school, work, long distance relationship, marriage, and moving up to\u20262. The Bay Area for 12 years, buying our first house, mental health and work, involvement in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/avalon4ever.dragonskies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/avalon4ever.dragonskies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/avalon4ever.dragonskies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avalon4ever.dragonskies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avalon4ever.dragonskies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=373"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/avalon4ever.dragonskies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":379,"href":"https:\/\/avalon4ever.dragonskies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373\/revisions\/379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/avalon4ever.dragonskies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avalon4ever.dragonskies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/avalon4ever.dragonskies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}