I left this city at twenty nine and came back at forty
Posted as eleven_years_away
- Looking for
- somebody local who will be patient with a person relearning the city
- Experience
- Fifteen years leading, most of it somewhere else entirely.
- Around
- Niterói side, Rio de Janeiro
I went away for work and stayed eleven years, and last year I came back and moved across the water because it is what I could afford, and I have discovered that I know almost nobody here any more.
Forty, Niterói side, dominant, fifteen years of this and only four of them in this city. Everything I learned about how people arrange these things I learned somewhere colder and more organised, where you could put a date in a diary six weeks out and it would still be there.
I am adjusting. It has taken me a year to stop being annoyed by plans that dissolve and start understanding that a plan here is a proposal. I am genuinely not complaining. I am saying I get it wrong and I would rather be corrected than quietly written off as difficult.
What I want is a long structured dynamic with one person. Service, protocol, standing rules, real obedience. I am formal by habit and I have been told I write like a letter, which is fair.
I am on the wrong side of the water and I know what that costs me here. I will do the crossing. I have a car and no illusions about the bridge on a Friday. Not looking for anybody who wants to teach me how the city works in a superior way. Not looking for a person who needs somebody with a wide local circle, because I do not have one yet.