Hehe, yes - things like friendship, they are complicated chemistry with a lot of variables included =)

Also, living next to Sami's would also mean living farther away from my son. And in my current situation one of the good things is that it is relatively easy to see my son. Many of my best friends also live in Tampere, so I have nothing to complain in this sense - in so many ways there is both a necessary and a healthy amount of good social interaction in my life.

But, yes, I do think that just like hunger in a symptom of not eating enough, similarly certain unpleasant emotions are symptoms of not having enough meaningful social interaction. Put this way, it sounds way too simple, so maybe I need to clarify that I think that people have huge personal variation in what counts as "enough" and "meaningful" when it comes to social interaction. Some people seem to depend on having company around all the time, and personally I'm more towards the hermit side =)

Well, that is the good side of the internet - it allows a nice way of social interaction which is not limited to physical presence. That way it is also easier to connect with people who, so to say, speak your language, or are tuned on the same frequency - which contributes towards the 'meaningful' aspect of the said 'meaningful social interaction'. (Personally, I find it rather exhausting to interact with people who seem to constantly misinterpret and misunderstand all of my messages. In such situations I switch into an internal 'auto-translate' mode: I speak them the language they understand, keeping the interaction smooth. That happens a lot in my work-related interaction with my customers.)