I've been thinking recently about the sort of people I tend to relate to and feel closest to. Of course, there's no one fixed answer to that... as with everything, it depends on so many variables, and often the people you end up closest to are some of the people you least expect.

But I do see some trends.

For now, we'll be talking about easily-definable groups. Most people belong to many easily-definable groups, of course, but you tend to match with other people in maybe one or two of those groups at most, rarely all of most of your groups (well, I rarely do anyway, and this is a me-centric post, so we'll go with that.)

Let's start with the most relevant group to this LJ's f-list: the spec-fic writers. This is an obvious one. Most of us are doing quite different things in life, yet at the heart of it all, we're all striving towards a similar ambition. It's an easy thing to relate to each other with. And yet I don't feel particularly close to most spec-fic writers I know. Maybe it's because that other stuff is so different, and even with these same goals, our minds are often off in other directions. My VPX tribe, that's a different matter though. A common experience, a common bond, something we all went through together. Even given how fleeting it was, it turned into something powerful.

Then of course there's travellers. Right now, pretty much all of my colleagues are, by definition, also travellers. We've all had the travel bug, and most of us still have it. Very few plan to stay in Vietnam for the rest of their lives (though there are a few), and we all have that shared outlook. We can share things, but does it produce a powerful bond? Well no, not by itself. As with all (okay, most - I'll get to the rest later) of these little categories, there's so much that just isn't shared, even while we do share the same job and love of travel.

But occasionally some of these things will come together. A few days ago I had the first decent conversation about Dragonball I've had in years... pretty much since the days I used to obsessively watch the show. And it was good... and led onto other conversations, to Journey to the West (which came about entirely separate from the Dragonball conversation), to comics (Preacher, Sandman, Watchmen) and good TV. And even to spec-fic writing. And of course, given where we are, and where we're both from, the whole travel angle. I was pretty surprised at the merging of all these different things, and it was a great night.

But there is that one category that transcends all that, which you will have already figured out if you read the subject line. Third-culture kids. Because a shared love of travel is one thing, but for us it's different... we're a people that find it hard to point to one place and call it home, people that, when asked "where are you from?", the answer is a big, lengthy discussion. We all come from vastly different backgrounds. We all have vastly different goals and interests. And yet, when we get together, somehow there's a really strong bond there, even if we've never lived in any of the same places in our respective pasts. It's also entirely irrespective of other interests and ambitions... I've felt it even with people I don't share many interests with at all. But it's there, and is somehow the strongest of all.

Okay, I've probably babbled enough. Some of this might seem quite obvious. Some of it might not. But it felt like just the sort of thing I wanted to put into words right now.