Making Friends: Introduction

how to make friends as an adult

"how do i make friends in the city? about once a month i find some variation of the question as i scroll through my twitter feed. it’s a tough question because there’s a lot of layers to it. loneliness, frustration, anxiety. it’s hard. cultivating friendships especially in adulthood is difficult. you’re not just grappling with conflicting schedules, but you also face people in a different headspace, different life stages, and different seasons a person might be in. and let’s not even get started with the way urban design impacts human connection. bottom line, to find a friend sometimes feels harder than finding a shooting star and capturing it in a mason jar. to find good friends can seem like mission impossible.

i often think back to a time where it felt like it was easy to make friends. as a kid, i distinctly remember being able to just easy make friends at the playground over a game of tag. somewhere along the line things got really complicated. that’s why id like to write series of reflections of how i made friends over the past few years as an adult in hopes that you might be able to walk away with a lesson or two that you can apply and hopefully make some friends! i don’t think my experience is necessarily prescriptive, but i think you may or may not be able to find a pattern or two that you can reflect and adapt in your own life.

its hard to understate how important of a role serendipity plays in friendships. a lot of circumstance that comes from being friends was in essence right time and right place. and i think that sounds very unpractical, but practically speaking i think i had to learn how to make friends anywhere and everywhere. it makes me think of this:

but i do think there are ways to manufacture that “serendipity.” and, above all, i think what connection requires foremost is intentionality. are you intentionally carving out time + energy to forge a new relationship?

Below is an outline of topics I’ll write reflections on throughout the coming weeks. I hope as I write, you can also fill in the remaining blanks with your experiences. I’m more than happy to accept submissions, and we can co-write a piece together somehow.

JUST SAY HI

SHOWING UP TO SPACES

LIVING WITH PEOPLE

LIVING IN PROXIMITY

MANO Y MANO

THROWING PARTIES

CONNECTING PEOPLE

i don’t plan on writing them sequentially. i may go in order or i may not. but either way, i hope you, the reader, finds some benefit.

sincerely,

haroon