Despite the stress of the move, I had a good weekend. And it was good because I spent most of it in pleasant company. 

On Saturday, I attended the second part of a trad climbing clinic, hands-on and outdoors in beautiful weather, in the fun company of some students from the research group where I work. And after the climbing, we all went out for burgers and beers. Despite the age difference (I’m much older than they are), it was comfortable and fun — really fun. 

Yesterday two good climbing buddies, who are really friends at this point, came and helped me move. One of them brought his landlord’s small trailer hitched to his own car and his girlfriend also came to help. The other one drove my car so that I could ride my motorcycle and leave it parked at my new place. Their help was priceless. Although to them it might have felt that they simply moved some boxes around, for me it was a huge psychological support as well as physical help. On top of making things so much faster because there were four persons, instead of just one, carrying boxes, it really helped me feel less sad or lonely about moving. 

I’m not upset about this move per se. I knew it was coming up this October; I’m not moving far and I’m moving to an area that I really like and where I wanted to live; the person with whom I’ll be living seems to be really nice and kind and interesting. But moving is stressful and brings up lots of emotions and memories for me. So doing it with the help of friends, and then going out for dinner with them afterwards (buying them dinner seemed the least I could do to thank them all for their help!) was really great — a tremendous help! I’m also very happy that my climbing buddies got to meet my new housemate and that they all seemed to like each other — it somehow makes me feel more at home in this corner of the world… 

Anyway, the events and emotions of this weekend are an additional confirmation of how much I benefit from (the right) human company, how much I need to be around nice people in person.