Happy Halloweekend my friend,
I am, by most accounts, a pretty friendly person. If not friendly, then certainly chatty. I never used to have issues making friends. I would meet people through rec sports, or lurking in parking lots by surf spots, or on chair lifts, then I’d just sort of force my friendship upon them. Honestly, I’m pretty sure most of you are on this distribution list because I have made you my friend out of sheer force of will.
No matter where I moved, I would just ease into new friendships. I didn’t know that I was living a semi-charmed life. Now, after living in Toronto for three and a half years, I get it. When people would move to Vancouver and tell me they were finding it hard to meet people, I used to sort of roll my eyes. I never had an issue, so I figured they mustn’t be trying all that hard. The karma for that snark and indignation has been real.
Three and a half years in, I have about three new friends to show for it (who are lovely), but my social life is a shadow of what it once was, and I have all but lost my ability to banter. These are dark days indeed when *I* don’t know remember how to carry a conversation or hold my own in a group chat.
Let it be known that it’s certainly not for lack of trying. I would practically chase people I’d meet down the sidewalk saying something like, “let’s go for a run together sometime!” or “maybe I could come with you to your yoga studio? Oh, you don’t do yoga? Wait why are you running from me?” I tried to join a book club that I knew some women from work were in and when they were like, ‘yeah, nah, hard no,’ I started my own damn book club in the hopes of luring people who were guaranteed to live in my neighbourhood into a bookish friendship trap. I tried to organize after-work drinks with unwilling colleagues for years. I joined a rec soccer league with a whole team of strangers who were not at all interested in going for after-game bevvies.
It was like they could smell the overly-friendly west-coast-heart-on-my-sleeve desperation dripping off me, and the most running I’ve seen since I got here is people running away from me.
So, I was thinking. I can’t be the only one I know who’s been going through the growing pains of trying to make friends as a grown up. Why not put the anguish and emotional isolation to work and share my best and worst tips for making new friends, and some of the great ideas shared by readers.
Try This:
Join a club. Try and find people with similar hobbies to you, and try insert yourself into your clubmates lives in small ways. Lend them things, borrow their tools, time your walks down their street to when they’re taking their bins out — do what you have to do to escape the time allotment mandated by the club and edge into real friend territory.
Go to bars/pubs alone. I wasn’t alone, but I have to admit that I essentially picked up one of my best Toronto friends at the bar. Remember — inflection is everything. ‘Do you wanna hang out sometime’ can come across in very different ways depending on how you intonate, and if you’re after friends, maybe practice your best golden retriever impression to make sure you get the vibe right.
Hang out at playgrounds. This is obviously better if you’re a parent with a child, otherwise the people with babies might get a little freaked out, but I have it on good authority that the shared trauma of childbirth is a great gateway to friendship.
Get a job. If you’re lucky, the people who get paid to associate with you at work *might* hang out with you. If not, at least you’ll have an income, which might enable you to pay for all of the coffees, dinners, drinks, outdoor equipment rentals, and bottles of wine it will take to woo some unsuspecting vagrant into being your friend.
Maybe don’t:
Make business cards with a QR code that takes your target pal to a landing page that plays a parody version of the song ‘Beggin’’ where yo using “I’m begging, begging youuuu to please be my friend now darling.” No one wants to see your Youtube channel.
Hold onto people’s hands for too long. I know— you’re sad and lonely and this is the first physical contact you’ve had outside of your significant other in months, but as a general rule, you need to let go of their hand about 10 seconds sooner than your heart would prefer. I’ve chosen to believe this is the only reason the Baroness Von Sketch lady didn’t want to hang.
Tell people where you’re from. Leave it out. Let them think you’re one of their kind for a while. The second you tell someone where you’re from, they will list all of the things they think they’d hate about you’re hometown. You don’t believe me? Vancouverites: think about Toronto. Torontonians: think about Vancouver. Everyone: think about Edmonton. The only places that are an exception to this are obviously Montréal and the Maritimes, which are both so steeped in coolness and good vibes that you’ll get asked about all the good things.
Advice from people I know to have friends:
*big props to the ones who just wrote how we met*
Best thing I’ve heard this in a while:
“Will you put your child on a leash?”
“Only if it’s a FREAK!”
in reference to:
CanCon Special: Citrine Horizon
I’m pretty excited to share this piece of CanLit: my friend Hannah Seraphim wrote a book and it’s actually really, really good.
Citrine Horizon is a beautiful, moving, wonderful book. The flow between poetry and prose is fluid and carries the reader on a lovely lazy river toward connection and intuition. In the book, Hannah digs into the deep discomfort and isolation of her health trauma to draw a map of the many ways she attempts to reconnect to her intuition and re-inhabit her skin, a task especially daunting after it feels as though her body (and the healthcare system) has betrayed her and become unrecognizable in a sense.
By getting into the dirt and bringing to life the anxious and dark moments, she makes the conclusion more poignant and the ultimate realizations more powerful, without writing what could have been a 'cancer book' like many others. Citrine Horizon is a salve for anyone who has spent time on examination tables being told that they have nothing to worry about, and yet, are worried beyond belief.
You can watch the recording of my interview with Hannah on Instagram or listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever else you get your podcasts. You can also buy Hannah’s book here or here.
If you think someone else might like this sort of nonsense in their inbox from time to time, why not share it with a friend?
Be safe and get weird out there, my friend! And if you’re doing fireworks this year, burn an extra roman candle for me because this bonkers province will do fireworks on Victoria day but NOT Halloween.
- Trish