Last night, I was again at First Fridays at the Aberdeen Art Center . I was there in connection to the work I'm doing on the creative district . We are looking to get state certification and I've kind of fallen into the lead role on that cuz Reasons.One of the things I love about Aberdeen is the sense of community here. You can feel it. It's palpable in subtle ways and I never know how to explain or describe it for purposes of writing about it on this blog, but it reminds me of home. I feel at home here.I was born and raised in Columbus, Georgia. I graduated high school with some of the same people with whom I attended kindergarten. As a teenager, I couldn't go anywhere without running into people that knew me, saying "hi" and doing a little catching up.To me, that's my normal. It's a normal I left behind a long time when I got married to a man whose only dream was to be a soldier, packed my bags and followed his career all over the US and even parts of Europe for a couple of decades.And then I got divorced and I ultimately spent some years homeless. A saving grace for me socially and psychologically is that I was on the street with my adult sons, so I still had people in my life that cared about me and respected me.That helped shield me from some of the worst and most damaging social aspects of being homeless. But I still went through hell socially. For me, that was the worst part of homelessness: The social shit to which people subject you while telling themselves they are good people trying to be kind and blah blah blah.I came to Aberdeen to get myself back into housing. I knew it had high speed internet, a serious grocery store and a Walmart Super Center. I work online, so I felt I didn't need much more than that. But I found so very much more than that.Last night at First Fridays, I ran into multiple people I've met previously who stopped by my table to say "Hi" like I'm an actual human being. I haven't had that in a real fucking long time and I can't tell you how much that matters to me. I can't tell you how much I feel healed by that and like I'm going to be okay again someday, though I'm still struggling financially at the moment and don't really have any close friends.Lots of people here have all kinds of wild hair colors, but aren't rebels and outcasts. It's a community full of artists and musicians and having blue or pink hair isn't a big "FUCK YOU!!!" It's just a cool thing they chose to do, not some rebel yell.The DnR Theater plays music 24/7. I live very close to it. I often walk past it at night on my way somewhere else and it strongly shapes my impression of the downtown area.The walls of many buildings are covered with murals. The sidewalks have stars embedded in them and sculptures dot the landscape.I arrived here and I could see how Kurt Cobain came to be the kind of person he seemed to be -- both a non-conformist and laid back about the whole thing -- and I still sense that on a regular basis. The spirit of Kurt Cobain lives on because his style was really imprinted with the vibe of this area, though he talked trash about the town and some locals aren't too crazy about the place being best known as his birth place.