Day 86: No family? There's an app for that

Holidays can be tough if you don't have a family. But I think it's stupid that people should be alone, just because they don't have close relatives. Sure, I enjoyed celebrating Christmas with my parents, brother, and grandparents as a kid. But the last years there have been different constellations of friends and family and that has been very nice too.

Anyway, last Easter I had recently broke up with my boyfriend since seven years. And my only relative in Sweden is my mum. Luckily I have some friends who invited me, but I still spent a lot of the holiday alone. You don't realize how many of your friends are on vacation with their family, posting pictures of sunny ski slopes at Easter until you try being alone for what you suddenly realize is one of the big family holidays.

So this year I really wanted to change something. Well, I guess, I wanted to change a lot of things in my life in general. And having all this people around all the time is a big change. Which I really like. It was always a childhood dream to have a home where people drop in an say hi without a formal invitation. I'm not really there yet, but I'm a lot closer than before.

And so far this Easter has been a lot less lonely than the last one. Yesterday I spent most of the day at the Hoffice. Then the evening preparing food together with the French guy staying here now. Today we had a lunch with my mum, the Korean family and a friend of mine since twenty years. Everyone had made some special dish and I think we really had a really nice time together. Even if some had never met before, and very few of us were close family.

Tomorrow I'm making the Easter brunch. There is a guy who I've met through Hoffice who has booked in the app AirDine, then there will be an old friend of mine, and the French guy. I'm not very good with new people, said my friend. I don't know if the others are either. Am I? At least I'm getting better at it. But we'll try.

So there is no app where you can get a family. Well, there might be. But thanks to Airbnb and other sharing economy services I've met so many great people.

So even though I sometimes wish I had a family of my own. Or that my brother, who's visiting Uppsala now, would want to see me. Or that I had other close relatives here. Even though I sometimes wish that, I'm so grateful for the people that I have in my life. May it be friends that have known me for twenty years or those who I've just met.