Of having a reputation of unfriendliness representing your city

Seattle, is it me, or is it you?

Life is mostly pretty good here. Work is back on the rockin' track where I love writing software, there is an abundance of nice places to go and cool events, and the weather is still nice most days. This weekend was really super fun, great, and did I mention great? And some wonderful people are moving out here soon.

But it's been hard to meet new friends. Okay, I expected that. But now I'm wondering if it's my fault or not. I imagined it was. But talking to some people who have moved here recently, many of them say the same thing: Seattleites are not welcoming. Not that they dislike you, just that they won't go out of their way to make you feel welcome. And it's been true: all the friends that I've met here, or at least a big most, have moved here relatively recently, or at least are not natives.

So this seed of doubt is sown. Now, I'm not going to harvest that weed; I'm not going to go out and join the chorus proclaiming "Seattle people are unfriendly!" Odds are, you get this in any city. It takes time, no worries.

And lest ye readers think me socially weak, and lest I allow my inner optimist to fail, I posit this: it's a good thing. It means that Seattlers are slow to make friends and slower to lose them. It seems like a pretty fair cold-weather-city thing around the world: fewer friends, but they're better. I'm all in favor of that. I'm always the one trimming the social circle, of splitting our group of 16 into four groups of four, of telling my freshman dormmates no you cannot all tag along for dinner because nobody can seat a table of 12. I imagine Seattle's doing that to me too, and whenever I find my niche, the friends in it will be more aligned with my personality and more interesting because of it. The forecast shows a couple more awkward months followed by meeting a lot of people I particularly dig.

Let's see how it pans out.