The workplace can be a good place to find opportunities to socialise, but what if you don't meet any like-minded people there, or what if you work alone? Is it, somewhat counter-intuitively, easier to find yourself lonely in a city than in a small town or village?
It's just as easy to be lonely in a city as out in the wilderness. Easier, really. It's harder to get to know someone when you meet in a crowded place. People can freely ignore you in the city; they can assume they don't have any responsibility for you. When there are fewer people, (...) they begin assuming some kind of responsibility, simply because you naturally do the same.
My advice to emerging documentary filmmakers would be: try to find other people, a group, a cooperative that you can work with. Filmmaking is hard and lonely and decidedly unglamorous. Find like-minded souls and share the joy and the misery.
In any city or town, you can find a good, rocking Italian place. The most unhealthy thing on the menu? I'll have two of those!
We always need friends. And I think we come out of these highly social environments with university, college, wherever we were, and getting to a new city could be daunting. It can be lonely, and it's almost easier to find a date than it is to find a friend.
What makes most people comfortable is some sort of sense of nostalgia. I grew up in a small town, and I could count my friends on one hand, and I still live that way. I think I'll die in a small town. When I can't move my bones around a stage any more, you'll find me living in a place that's spread out and rural and spacious.
If you take any populated place - any major city in America - and drive 45 minutes from that spot directly out of town you'll be in about as country a place as you'll ever find.
I am holed up in a small village where I am doing my own work and it feels great. I have a small gallery and not many people find me, but I am happy being left alone and doing what I love.
[Gandhi] said, "I want to find God, and because I want to find God, I have to find God along with other people. I don't believe I can find God alone. If I did, I would be running to the Himalayas to find God in some cave there. But since I believe that nobody can find God alone, I have to work with people. I have to take them with me. Alone I can't come to Him."
I grew up in the small German village of Bosingen, which is located between Black Forest and the state capital of Stuttgart. And when I say small, I mean small. In our village, there were no more than 1,700 people. And we all loved football, but there weren't a lot of places for us boys around town to play in.
Portland is a place where you can find a community as a feminist, a vegan or a fat activist. Artists, musicians, knitters, and filmmakers can all meet like-minded souls. It's proved the perfect place for me and all my punk friends.
It ain't easy to break out of a mold, but if you do your work, people will ultimately see what you're capable of. Too often, people find it easier to make assumptions and stick with what they believe. They put you in a place and it makes their job easier. The good people constantly search for something different.
If you look at any sitcom that you watch, if it takes place in, say, a small town in Massachusetts, and it's about the dynamics of the people in that town, the showrunner probably grew up in a town like that, witnessed things, and created content.
Lonely is the night when you find yourself alone.
My feeling is, the world is a lonely place. If you can find people who are like you, and find some camaraderie, that's special. I wish there was more of that in the world, in general.
Especially for me, growing up in such a small town in the middle of nowhere, the desire to be away was incredible. I wanted to see new lands, meet new people from the city, and meet people that were in much less fortunate situations than I was, so that I could be more appreciative of my present. At least I had food on the table.
My love of movies started when I was 7 years old, living in a small town, going to the movies all the time, and finding the people in the movies more interesting than the people in my small town. Also, at that time, it wasn't that easy to find out about movies.