#and it's frustrating and scary

[shitty-check-please-aus]

You should get dinner and sleep!!! But also: the first step to making friends is spending time with people and thats kind of hard to do right now!!! We're all going to be figuring it out again soon, but Ive seen a lot of people with similar worries. so my advice is to be brave. Approach people. Friends are looking for you as much as you are looking for them.

Also. Don't be afraid to try hanging out with people and have it not quite work out how you hoped - sometimes to make friends it takes tome to narrow down who you're really comfortable and compatible with. Don’t let that deter you! And remember it's ok to have some friends who are good for certain things. You can have friends where all you ever really do is watch movies together, and you can sleepovers where you tell personal secrets in the vulnerable quiet of 3am, and maybe the friend who knows all your secrets doesn’t have the same taste in movies and thats fine!

Also a good way to make friends (that you can do right now) is just to do an internet search for "(interest of yours) Discord server". There almost always is one. Ive seen them for rock climbing, or band fandom, or rabbit raising, or minecraft servers members, or poetry appreciation. Heck I've been IN some of those! There will almost always be one for whatever you're interested in - get to chatting with people who share your interests!! Get out there and make friends!

okay this was kind of a lot of asks and I’m assuming they’re all from the same person because the second and third start with “also.” So, I’m gonna kind of go point by point. It’s all stuff that I think would be really great encouragement for someone who was new to this journey, but I’ve run into some problems since I’ve been trying for a while. These were some of my pre-pandemic issues, btw.

I don’t actually think that people are looking for friends as much as I’m looking for them, tbh! Or maybe a better way of putting it is that I don’t think that I’m the kind of friend that people in my city want. I’m a one-drink maximum person who doesn’t smoke (I can be around drunk people but cigarette and weed smoke gives me nausea/headache), and that doesn’t really align with the general culture around here. And even when I’ve tried to do things where those aren’t factors (being a regular at a group exercise class, taking classes at an improv place, going to events at bookstores, going to every single NaNoWriMo meetup I could) I get the vibe that people are, as if the world was America’s Next Top Model, not there to make friends. 

I do have a book club that I joined last February (rip @ the timing) and they are all nice people to talk to once every 6 weeks or so on zoom, but I would put them in the acquaintance category because like, I've talked to them like 10-12 times over the past year

At this point I would settle for a “Can go out to a short lunch one-on-one sometimes” friend, which is a lower goal than my previous “Could go to an occasional concert with me” friend, or the even higher goal of a “Would go to trivia nights regularly with me” friend.  3AM secrets are reserved for Popcorn the Cat. 

I’m in one fairly dead NaNoWriMo discord, but I have no idea what the etiquette is supposed to be on discord and I’m terrified I’ll do things wrong and people will hate me. This may be social anxiety. Like, how often are you supposed to contribute? Is it rude to not say enough? Is it rude to say too much? What are the little emoji reactions supposed to do, is it bad if you use those too much / too little?