I can smell that someone's cooking up a batch of hotdoggies on my walk home from work. Not that I'd be able to tell where it's coming from in a canyon of seventeen-story apartment buildings, but the smell immediately conjures up imaginary memories of my mother and her sisters giggling like the school-girls they, well, were.

A weenie roast.

I'm constantly battered by the (false) thought that my life would be insanely better if I had a balcony. Or that all of my problems would suddenly disappeared if I lived in a house. Grandmothers would invite me over for barbecues where I could kiss the cheeks of neighbors babies and lounge in tiny plastic furniture sipping a chilled alcoholic beverage while shifting my chair every fifteen minutes as the sun cut across the sky.

I don't really know my neighbors. Maybe it's because the only time I venture outside my door is when I run out of non-cheap, slightly local beer and Trader Joe's Tuscan Panne and, of course, on my daily walk to work and back. But I don't really run into my neighbors either.

This is the first time I've ever been in a situation where I could actually become a hermit and do just fine sitting alone reading my monthly subscription to 'Hermiting Made Simple'. It's the first time I've ever been tossed into the next step of life and not forcibly thrown into a group where we see who can come up with the best lies to icebreakers that'll make us seem more interesting, intelligent and fulfilled. Honestly, I kind of miss it. Working at making friends from nothing is quite difficult.

There's no handbook on how to make yourself seem more 'approachable' or 'full of life' or just full of empty adjectives. There's nothing that tells you where the somewhat awkwardly average people go to have fun without getting hit on by creepy dudes ten years older with suspicious accents.

How do you get a bunch of people all doing the commuting > work > commuting > dinner > netflix > sleep + a bit of introversion (maybe more than a bit) to find each other? I'll let you know when I find out, but I'll be damned if I'm going to miss a barbecue.