Losing anonymity
In the move back to England, I've also moved back to the home town a grew up in. And now I have this wierd obsession of looking at people and thinking "do I know them", "did I go to school with them", "18 years later is this how they look".
I left the little home town as soon as I could, went to University in Bath, followed by work in London and then Canada for 10 years. Meaning I pretty much lost touch with everyone I knew. Never went too a reunion (not a big thing here anyway) and never really cared to much about it. Living in a big city in Canada, I'm used to walking in to places and not being know and not knowing anyone, most of the time.
Now admittedly I haven't met anyone I went to school with, although I did google them. To no avail. It's a wierd feeling and gives me a slight sense of insecurity. I spent the last few days worrying about all those things I imagine people worry about at reunions... how do I measure my success over the last few years? If people look at my current dishevelled state I'd probably not rank high. "That brainy kid in school, I met him the other day, not doing too well, driving a 5 year old Toyota".
But that depends upon how you measure life and there's nothing as shallow as that. I try not to worry about that stuff, really I don't care too much, but there's that bit of me that does. Squashing that, relaxing and being happy and confident is sometimes a tough job for me.
So we'll see what happens, I might meet that person on the street and try hard not to measure my success against his, but instead have fun and relax.