[cosmic_cheese]

Mostly, it boils down to how I’ve traditionally been terrible at maintaining connections to people who aren’t in my immediate vicinity (and conversely, most people I’ve met have also not been great at this). I can count the number of post-move non-immediate-family that I either stay connected to or don’t need to stay constantly connected to because picking up where we left off years ago is effortless on a single hand. It feels bad to make a bunch of friends that I probably won’t be able to keep if I move.

Other than that, if it’s likely that I’ll want/need to move some time in the near-ish future, it doesn’t make sense to build a situation that would make that future move more difficult (emotionally or otherwise) than it needs to be. Having a sizable social circle established prior to moving introduces room for messy hesitance and regret.