Anonymity

One more thing I particularly miss about full time life in the big smoke it's the anonymity. The ability to get lost in the crowd, be just another face on the bus or one of many busy people in the CBD supermarket. You can go for a walk and be just beyond your own neighbourhood and see no one you know or indeed that you've ever seen before.

But no more. Unless you count the fact that when I walk around the paddocks at Ardlethan the kangaroos don't remember me (and I don't). I now have a not inconsiderable fear of running into a client or someone I should be impressing while swimming laps at the local pool - or worse, hauling my drowned rat, goggle-marked eye sporting self out of said pool. I don't even want to think about the possibility of a change room run in.

Then there's running into people at the supermarket, the newsagent, the petrol station, the coffee shop and the pizza takeaway joint. Never before in my working life did the possibility of regularly running into clients outside of meetings occur to me.

It's not that I didn't expect it - I remember going to the supermarket with Mum as a kid in Bathurst was always potentially fraught because she might run into a patient or two (Mum's a GP) - but I'd pleasantly put it out of my mind until it happened.

And I'm a bit lucky, although I live in an even smaller community than the town I work in, at least I get to separate home from work a bit more than most out here.

I've also decided that the lack of anonymity is like a weird flip side of the fact that it's hard to make friends in a small community where everyone already has an established network. People know who you are (they're your acquaintenances) but breaking through that to genuine friendship requires a whole other level of engagement.

But the fun I'm having consolidating new friendships is a tale for another post...