finding friends

[firecat]

inspired by snippy

for some folks, online friends don't fill the same social needs as in-person friends.

for those of you who have had difficulty at times making in-person friends, and have found ways to solve that problem, what worked for you?

Some things that have worked for me are

• inviting co-workers to a home-made dinner
  
• joining and organizing ongoing religious/spiritual groups (in my case, eclectic/women's spirituality/shamanic)
  
• participating in and organizing in-person meetings of people I knew from online forums
  

Things that seem to work for other people that don't usually work for me are

• parties
  
• bars
  
• volunteering (I love volunteering, but I haven't usually made friends that way)
  
• classes
  

Comments

[pyrzqxgl.livejournal.com]

Back in my BBS days online friends *were* in-person friends, because they were almost all local, plus that the fact that I ran a popular and long-lived discussion BBS myself put me into a host/facilitator/hub/knowledgeable person/local personality/etc. role as opposed to just being antisocial. But the online world moved onward and outward ...

I'd say that a good way to make in-person friends is to *really* *make* them, i.e. give birth to them, but, um, people might faint if I said that.

I have a fantasy that if I ever finished writing a book that that would help, and if anyone tries to disillusion me about that, well, I have my sound card turned off, so (cue the Flash Girls) lalalalalalalalalala I can't hear you!