Back home from beautiful Islay. A great four days. Wonderful people and an amazing experience of how a small community (3.200 people) works together. Everybody waves to each other when driving. People say hello when you walk by. Spent a half day at the Bruichladdich distillery and learned a lot about old fashioned production, but also modern ways of engaging with a global community of fans/customers.
This has given me a fresh perspective on my own home community, roughly the same amount of people. Also an island. Things are totally different than Islay. People stick more to themselves. They are busy, always going somewhere. Construction work is going on everywhere on the island, I expect even more busy people are moving here.
The major difference that I can identify is that my home is much closer to an urban area – only about 35 km to Stockholm. That makes it much much easier to maintain urban life even in a more rural area.
I really thought I moved here as an alternative to the busier areas around Stockholm. And for the first couple of years things were quite fine here. But now I’m wondering where things are headed. And not feeling very comfortable about it. Hm.