Getting to know you

Tomorrow I'm off to Jacksonville, Florida for a conference. (Note for those less familiar with U.S. geography: this conference is in my state, but it's at the northernmost point and I'm at the southernmost point. That makes it a seven-hour drive, so I'm flying.) I'm especially looking forward to this conference. Since moving to Miami last summer, I've been trying to make friends, but that takes times. And it's rare now that I get to spend time with old friends, the ones you have a shared history with. I've been going to these conferences twice a year for five years now, and so while it is work to prepare talks and attend meetings, it's also great fun to catch up with people I've known for quite a while.

I've had some difficulty figuring out how to make friends since I moved here. My coworkers are great, but I know I need non-work friends too. I'm not much of a joiner - my hobbies of cooking and reading are generally solitary, and I couldn't find a club or organization I really want to join. In the fall, though, it occurred to me that church might be the thing. An old high school friend is active in the Unitarian Universalist Church, and I've attended them in the past. Unitarians provide religion for the non-religious (atheists and pagans welcome), and the church that we joined has an extremely liberal definition of "young" for those who participate in the "young adult" group. (Basically, anyone who's not retired seems to turn up.) I've met lots of people, and lots of people I'd like to get to know better. (That's my definition of a potential friend, I guess.) Tonight I'm off to volunteer with some of them at a fundraiser. I think I'll be bussing tables, which is the work I tried to get away from by earning my PhD, but it's all for a good cause.