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We don't dislike the new place, i.e. new home in Scottsdale. I love it, DH loves it too. But you can't spend all of your time in the house or working in the yard. Interaction with other people is a must. We're just not having much luck in that quarter. If you look at other posts in this thread, you'll find we are not the only ones having that experience.
Here in Redwood City, homes are relatively close together. Small lots. Small garages, relatively speaking. Nobody gets into their car in the garage, like they do in Scottsdale. We all park in our driveways or in front of the house. Nobody here has cars with dark tinted windows. In Arizona, everyone does. I get it -- the sun is fierce in Arizona. UV is bad for you and your car's interior.
Here, there are plenty of opportunities to chat with neighbors or wave. It's very different in Scottsdale. If I'm out on the street, I wave at cars even though I can't see who's inside. I've no idea if they wave back.
Our neighbors across the street in Arizona have a 6700 sq ft house with an enormous built-in aquarium. I've never been in their house. I only know this because I looked it up online.
You are talking apples and oranges here. Small town USA, hanging out in the neighborhood versus a neighborhood which sounds like being populated by a different social group.
What have you done to connect with your neighbors in AZ?
BTW - checking on your neighbors via real estate pages is creepy. Hi, I am Fluffy and would like to see your aquarium in real life!
It might have had. Here in RWC we have wooden fences, of course, but we've always interacted with our neighbors if for no other reason than to say, "I think we need to replace this fence pretty soon." The walls endure.
Another comment related to your OP, Fluffy, and my original reply early in what has become a LONG thread.
If/when we move again, the only requirements will be that our home is in a 55+ (or a CCRC). Everything else is up for discussion and negotiation.
Related to the rest of the thread:
Covid has NOTHING to do with Fluffy's feeling of having little social interaction since she's moved the Scottsdale/phoenix. With the exception of a few communities (like the 55+), It's been that way for decades. (Many locals call Scottsdale Snotsdale. They aren't joking.)
Kathryn, fire pits ARE wonderful, but not a great idea in the dry desert. And I'm pretty damn sure that Fluffy's HOA doesn't allow them.
Last edited by Jkgourmet; 10-28-2021 at 12:34 PM..
Here in my neighborhood that I’ve been here for 3 years I occasionally talk to the neighbors.
I honestly haven’t made an effort. I could go hang out at the community pool etc and meet more. I blame myself.
I do have way more friends I’ve made in the last year than I ever had in all my life in California. I’m very social as are lot of people in my gym. I hang out with some of them.
I also got back into cars and have made a lot of car friends. I set up dinner meets, car cruises, etc. Last week I went out five nights with different friends for dinner.
I’m having the best time of my life and I have to say that mAking a concerted and consistant effort has made all the difference.
Georgia is on my radar; it seems like a good place to move from out of state. The people are friendly. They don't typically get hit with hurricanes or tornadoes like the rest of the south?
From what I read, some isolation is part of life for a good number of retirees after they quit working.
Working brought people in contact with other people automatically every day at work, but when working disappears some feel alone or actually are alone. And it then takes effort to be with other people. And it can differ whether married or single.
And the neighborhood structure in question in Arizona is not automatically conducive to meeting people, if one wants to know neighbors.
I can say from my own experience that this is very true. I've worked corporate & govt jobs for 38 years, all in an office setting. I vastly underestimated the amount of social stimulation I got just from interacting with co-workers for work or play. By the time I got home each day, I was ready for down time, and relished that time alone. Working my job from home for nearly two years, and having a job that doesn't really require much collaboration with co-workers, I soon began to feel the discomfort of isolation. I actually had to start consciously creating ways to be with other people socially. That's been a challenge because I never really had to do this before. There've been many times that I felt excruciatingly alone these last two years, to the point of depression. However, this pain was still not enough to make me drag my @ss back into that office by choice!
My point is that this WFH situation gave me a peek at what retirement could be like if I don't widen my social circle considerably, as my sibs have never been close to each other, and none live nearby anyway. So, I became fully aware at how much I've depended on the workplace to provide pleasant chit-chat, lunches & outings, make good friends, even acquire a few boyfriends along the way, etc. I barely had to try to make any of this happen. It just fell right into my lap. But come retirement time, this won't be available anymore. That's a bit of a shock to the system. How do you change your social patterns this late in life? The fact is that I've enjoyed being a lone wolf because usually the workplace gave me enough people-time to suit my personality, plus whatever social activities I engaged in besides work.
But at least now I can see this coming, and have time to plan for it rather than be hit with a nasty surprise at retirement. I can now see how elders with little or no family could become very isolated, bored, and depressed.
Ever since I first posted here on CD I've felt that the quandary of where to move in retirement has gotten to be a common dilemma for many. I initially went to a small town one hundred miles to the south, later, I moved again, another one hundred miles to the south. The first town was a real challenge when it came to meeting people, my wife had died and I was a older batchelor in a one stoplight town. The second town has been my home for the last ten years, and I've yet to make any solid friendships that could equal those of the city where I spent over fifty years.
America has undergone some huge social changes, and I suppose those are part of the problems we face with our newfound social isolation. The actual GPS coordinates don't factor as much as we'd like to think, it's more of a "people" thing than a "place" thing. In the book, "Affluenza" the authors defined the phenomenon as a kind of social disease, one that affects the way in which we relate to each other and our environment.
That all began in the seventies for me, people I worked with were now making themselves out to be innovative chefs, and so added huge commercial kitchens to their homes, then it was the car we drove, is it a "premium" brand, is your dog "papered," how much do you make, where have you traveled, where did you stay, on and on they droned, and it was obvious we had turned a corner along the path to middle age
Another definition here:
"Symptoms of affluenza include a myopic focus on work and earning money, strained personal relationships, depression, a self-image tied directly to financial status, and difficulty interacting with or relating to others."
That last part, about "difficulty" with relating to others is what I consider to be the problem with making friends in our older years. After a lifetime of chasing money and gaining the supposed status of having money, it would naturally follow that we can't simply "turn that off." The pretentious types are still posturing, and the over the top materialistic types are still terribly infatuated with their "stuff." Those who have no use for these posers are actually hiding in their homes, enjoying the solitude of that when compared to the truly tortuous experience of spending time with pretentious people we can't stand.
As a footnote: After ten years of reading through the various posts on CD forums, I'm happy that, at the least, I'm not living next door to some of the more overbearing and rude posters who frequent the forums, the bragging, the chastising, the rude dismissals, the intrusive questioning, I can't imagine processing all that social interaction while sitting around my neighbors backyard-over the top-Romanesque- fire pit..
We moved back to SoCal for 4 years. When we first moved in we made the initial effort to say hi to our neighbors. Our next door neighbor are retirees and they were happy that we reached out The wife and I share the passion for plants & gardening so that helped the chemistry. During COVID, we'd call them to ask if they like something from Costco as we're going shopping anyway, that helps building the relationship.
The neighbor on the other side is a Korean family. I hardly see the husband but we did met one time and I learned that he drives 60 miles one-way to work so that may explain why he's never outside doing yard work. The wife was shy and reserved initially but one time while I was doing the yard work she pulled up on the driveway, I said "hello" in Korean to her and she cracked up laughing so that helped breaking the ice. One night she came and ran the door bell repeatedly and pounded on the door, it turned out our sprinkler pipe has cracked and it was flooding the street. So she's helpful this way. Since then, my DW exchange Christmas presents with the neighbors and they reciprocated in return.
The neighbor across the street is a Chinese family. They are friendly but limited in English ability. They tend to imitate what we do in landscaping. I hired a landscaper to remodel our front yard, they liked what we've done and hired the same landscaper to remodel their front yard as well. I suspect because their limited English skills they have trouble calling different contractors to get quotes, so this makes it easy on them. It's all good as it improves the curb appeal for the neighborhood. Later, I hired a painter to re-paint our house, they came over and asked how much and got the painter's phone number. They never re-paint their house. I suspect because of COVID and their restaurant was forced to shutdown close to a year. They run a Hawaiian restaurant so occasionally we'd get food as presents from them. DW exchanges presents as social protocol dictates.
We don't consider our neighbors as close friends but it's nice to get along and able to talk if there's an issue.
We don't dislike the new place, i.e. new home in Scottsdale. I love it, DH loves it too. But you can't spend all of your time in the house or working in the yard. Interaction with other people is a must. We're just not having much luck in that quarter. If you look at other posts in this thread, you'll find we are not the only ones having that experience.
Here in Redwood City, homes are relatively close together. Small lots. Small garages, relatively speaking. Nobody gets into their car in the garage, like they do in Scottsdale. We all park in our driveways or in front of the house. Nobody here has cars with dark tinted windows. In Arizona, everyone does. I get it -- the sun is fierce in Arizona. UV is bad for you and your car's interior.
Here, there are plenty of opportunities to chat with neighbors or wave. It's very different in Scottsdale. If I'm out on the street, I wave at cars even though I can't see who's inside. I've no idea if they wave back.
Our neighbors across the street in Arizona have a 6700 sq ft house with an enormous built-in aquarium. I've never been in their house. I only know this because I looked it up online.
Okay - some more information helps - I really had no idea what your issue was.
FWIW, my car is always garaged. I would not live somewhere that I did not have a garage to park in. With a locking door. Lots of people walk and run in my neighborhood - most people are very friendly. But I live in rather an average suburban neighborhood - a nice one, well kept, but certainly not acre lots. "Normal" sized homes. 2k - 3k sqft or something around that. Not in a huge home on a large lot. How does one compare that to living in an area where houses are small and close together? I mean, that is apples and oranges isn't it?
And I will add, just to be perfectly honestly, I really don't think it is a "must" to interact with neighbors, or chat across a fence or whatever...I mean, I have a good friendship with one neighbor across the street, our sons grew up together and are best friends even as adults. But I can go weeks without speaking to a soul in our neighborhood - I work in the yard a lot and am visible, but I just don't have time to be chatty with everyone. Maybe just a personality difference. (I still work too though, will retire in a few months but I don't think that will make any difference here.)
I moved from N CA Bay Area to OR in 2002 and it took 7 years before I stopped thinking about moving back to CA. Now I wouldn't even consider it.
I was born and raised in CA, moved to Hawaii, then to Minnesota, and now Arizona. CA still calls to me.
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