Imbolc and turning my birthday off

Social media is strange, so much a part of our lives and yet, hardly really social is it?
Today I saw Imbolc was trending on Facebook?  Wow, how mainstream is Paganism becoming eh? 

Anyhoo, I turned my birthday off today, I had considered it last year, forgot about it and then had to suffer the wave of well wishes from people who don't actually care for me, don't know what my birthday is anyway and would never deign to contact me via any other media. Why the pretence?  I figure if people ACTUALLY care, they know already and so, I switched it off, I feel 100% comfortable with that.

Funny enough yesterday I ran into a girl who was raised, like The Girl was, in my building. She lives just above BFF and despite that enticing possibility I turned down her offer of a home exchange.  Not only are their flats smaller and badly made, my whole building is going to be demolished in the next few years and we are getting new homes.  I will be damned if I would give that up even if it did mean being closer to the lovely BFF.  But then she told me why she asked.  She wanted to be closer to her parents and I could not fault her for that, I commiserated with her and talked about how I feel things are hard being so isolated from family.  Mine are all abroad now except for my kids, it is a lonely existence despite the fact that it is not a feeling I tend to experience, I still dislike the IDEA of my own isolation. She felt a bit bad after my ocean wide distance from my mother dwarfed her mere street wide one (We literally live a seven minute stroll from each other) from hers but again I reminded her that I understood how important it was to be with family and wished her well on getting an exchange to this building.

 Decided (again) that I really need to make an effort in making my expansive family dreams come true and not just giving it up as a lost cause.  I know the right people are out there.  People can't be so thoroughly isolationist can they?  We shall see :)