Making New Friends
(aka: see Suz be weird in different scenarios)
Making friends as an adult is hard, at least in my experience. I’m an introvert. My creative work and hobbies are largely solitary. We’re about to hit two full years of Covid-related closures and “distancing”. When you put all of these things together… just… oooof.
I lived in Utah for over two decades—pretty much all of my adult life—and I had no idea how much I’d relied on Utah Mormon culture for my social interaction until I didn’t have it anymore. Moving to Nashville 3 1/2 years ago was eye-opening. Friends didn’t just fall into my lap. I wasn’t visited by each of my neighbors, in turn, and asked my life story (followed up by the doling out of hot neighborhood goss’). I still don’t know most of my neighbors. I have no church congregation to call my “ward family”— and, don’t get me wrong, I don’t want one. I don’t want to go back to church just to use it as a pool for potential friends. But it’s been weirdly jarring to realize that, without a church congregation, I have to find alternate pools of potential friends. And I have had to find these alternate pools myself, using proactive initiative. I’ve had to actively try to meet new people. The introvert in me gets cold sweats just thinking about that. The introvert in me is like, “But we are ok just having the friends in our phone, right? Texting our besties in Utah and Washington and Maryland is totally enough!” But the most human part of me knows I need actual connection, with local people. With, like, their actual bodies and faces. On hiking trails, or in rooms together. The soul-starved part of me knows that the physical, in-person kind of connection is vital.
So, over the last couple of years, I have actively tried to meet new people. And it hasn’t killed me. So far.
How and where have I met these people?