77 Comments

Kelton, what the hell. This hits so hard I had to stop reading after every other paragraph to feel my feelings. One thing I find really challenging is balancing my natural introversion with the socializing required to make friends - especially knowing the extra energy that goes into the beginning stages. I feel exhausted just thinking about it. But you’ve reminded me that I need (want) to reach out to someone who I met on a walk months ago - we just ran into each other and started talking about my dog and clicked and exchanged numbers. I’m not in a small town, that never happens! But we haven’t met up since. Making new friends is the worst (and also the best obvi, eventually).

ETA: I will never ever ever forget the one person who, when I first moved to DC, did actually invite and encourage this shy new girl to go to events together. It was totally unexpected and I was so grateful. May we all find time to be that person.

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This! It is so easy for me to love being alone, only to find loneliness sneak up on me. I love doing things by myself, but forget that in the midst of those things, I need to be seeking out time to do stuff with other people.

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I feel this challenge too. It’s hard, and worth it, and still hard.

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Thank you for expressing this angsty feeling. I am in a completely different life space, a 68 y/o retired cis female doctor who is recently (18 months) solo in a town I have lived in for 23 years. My old married friends haven’t exactly abandoned me but I find less and less fulfilling to engage with them so I am actively trying to find new friends who can connect on a different deeper level. Having worked many years in spaces where no one really became friends (due to a hierarchical structure in medicine that pits women with different jobs against each other) I am hungering for true connection and bonding in this chapter of my life. I am happy in solitude but want the closeness of true friendship to enrich my days. Your piece has inspired me to keep trying to connect.

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We’re in it together. 💛

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I am 67, and moved to the foothills of California 8 years ago. It has only been the last two years that I have come to feel at "home" here, nurtured and absolutely delighted by the friendships I'm making. Be patient, stay mindful and keep reaching out. And thanks, Kelton, for those stats about how long it takes to make a friend. Very interesting, and I would say very true. 💜

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I do not yet have a single friend in my (not-so-new-anymore) hometown and I feel all of this IN MY FREAKIN SOUL.

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Something I appreciate about you is your willingness to travel for friendship. I think a lot of people forget that it's often worth it to drive an hour out and an hour back just to feel seen.

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Every complaint about the Barbie movie not going deep enough/not being subversive enough/&c. - I mean, these are all valid points and certainly opinions people shpuld have on topics we should do something about, BUT...I'm every time just like, you do realize this is a big budget fun commercial movie with mainstream stars and mainstream machinery literally produced by Mattel -- what were you expecting? Frankly, it said a lot more than I would have expected it be allowed to given those constraints, and really there is a huuuuuuge chunk of this society that _needs_ some Feminism 101 and a mainstream entry point to discover it?

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I mean it was exactly what I was expecting 😂 and agree on the 101

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Also, it's making conservative white dudes So Sad, and that alone is worth the ticket price tbh. 😁

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Yeahhhhh!

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Making friends after a certain age is so hard. I moved to the Midwest in my late 20s and it took me a good five years to even make one good friend. Honestly, even now, I’m not as close as I would like to be to some of them. As a male in our culture, it’s so hard to be vulnerable and say to another guy, “hey, I’m lonely.” It’s embarrassing and it’s hard. But we must try. I’ve certainly written about this in my newsletter and will continue to do so because it’s important.

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Agree — it's been interesting to watch Ben on the same journey I am, and see how differently he approaches it. In this regard, it does feel like I was given more tools, including the tool of just being vulnerable.

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Honestly, and a lot of me can be also me. I'm not a social butterfly. I'm not an extrovert. I guess I'm somewhere in the middle. Making friends is hard, for sure.

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Your willingness and ability to bare your soul is poignant and opens doors that some of us have chosen to keep closed. Yes, I am lonely. No, I have not done all that I could to reach out and make friends. My insecurities are much the same as yours. Sometimes I get depressed and weep. So, at your urging, I will reach out again and try to connect with several people. How many hours do I have?

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I hope your reaching out is rewarded. I'm rooting for everyone on this thread.

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Coming up on year 3 in a new place, this is so real – especially considering we moved here in May 2020 :-| If any Shangriloggers are in the Tacoma/Seattle area, I'd love to meet up! Otherwise, I will be out here texting 3 folks (gulp).

And Kelton, I've always wanted to be your friend!

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I am in Bremerton, which, as a former long-term Seattleite, I realize is not *really* in your area, but still! Would definitely love a meet up somewhere sometime. Even though it feels awkward to even comment this and I can already feel the awkwardness of a meetup, I haven’t made friends in the two years I have been here and this essay of Kelton’s really resonated!

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I love this.

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Yessss! I am in the west side of Tacoma so Bremerton is not too far. Idk how to exchange info on substack – is there a DM function?

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Apparently Substack doesn’t have any way to private message, so I just impulsively created a new gmail account — maybe you and anyone interested in a meet up in the area can send your info to it, and I will reply with my actual email: shangriloggerspnw@gmail.com. With apologies to Kelton for the intellectual property theft of the name, but this is just so we can all get each other’s info!

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Yay just sent an email!!

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I recently moved to Seattle (I lived here ages ago but am now largely starting over). I have a few close friends but am really struggling with how to expand my circle + find people to *do* stuff with that have the potential to become friends. (I am ... not outdoorsy at all.) All that to say - would be totally into a meet-up too!

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I wasn’t sure how to best have us share contact into without posting email addresses here, so see my reply above to Madeline for the gmail account I created that I am hoping will work for folks in this general area to email their info! I will reply from that inbox with my real email to get us all connected.

I’m an introvert with ADHD so taking this first step is semi-miraculous, but worth the potential friendships — and I am not outdoorsy either, which definitely can be a limiting factor in this area, ha!

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The embarrassing part of making friends is spot on. When I first moved to ABQ, I was very intentional about making friends since i had zero, which meant embracing the embarrassment of asking people to do stuff and not knowing if “I’m busy this week” meant “I’m busy this week” or “leave me alone, desperate weird new girl!” Add to that I seem to always attract other introverts, so I truly didn’t know whether people were avoiding me or just avoiding everyone. But I kept texting thru my reddening cheeks...and those people are still my friends! I don’t see them as often as maybe I’d like, but then again, we’re at the point where sometimes I’m the busy one and I have to decline! So now I’m popular!!! That’s the takeaway!!!!! (Jk making friends both sucks and is beautiful, etc. etc.)

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Lol “so now I’m popular” I cherish you.

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Maybe my favorite post yet? I think I've said that before, but yeah, this one. Definitely this one.

The part where Ben and your neighbor are trading stories about their summer plans felt like something out of a Portlandia skit. I always feel like I'm being asked about my plans, and my answer is something akin to maybe watering the garden later, you know, if it's not too hot, while the other person is packing their zero gravity gear for a trip to the moon that evening. Then I look down and realize I'm wearing Crocs and feel like I may as well just start digging my grave right then and there.

Sidenote: the word dweeb does not get enough play in the 2020s.

When my husband and I first moved to our current town almost three years ago, I had grand ideas of making fast friends of my neighbors and being immediately indoctrinated into my brother's friend group. I'm slowly making neighborhood friends, but I have not once hung out with my brother alongside his friends. Whatever social-circle-by-association I thought we'd have because of him hasn't materialized. I used to feel envious of my brother and his wife for having so many friends here, but I recently realized all of their friends are here because...they have never lived anywhere else. They know more people here, but we know more people elsewhere. We can go to Boston, NYC, or London and see friends, and they can't do that. So. One is not necessarily better than the other, but everyone's realities are different. That doesn't mean I don't wish that I had more friends where we live now, but when I find myself thinking about how I don't, I try to remind myself of that fact.

I loved these two sentences from your post:

"While I feel like I belong here, in this place, I do not feel like I belong. Instead, I feel like every joke I make falls flat, every conversation I’m in is one people wrap up as soon as they can, and everyone is always doing something unbearably cool while I am at a computer."

"It’s that I can feel the connectivity of years-long friendships all around me, the ease of which they stop by and hang out with one another, the impenetrable force of inside jokes while they huddle together at parties and I stand in the kitchen with the dogs, and I am simply jealous, impatient, lonely, and insecure."

I have felt all of those things and been in those situations more times than I can count. I think it gets a little easier with each chance encounter and with each accepted invitation to hang out, although I do think it's just about impossible to replicate the sense of intimacy in the span of a few years that comes with decades of familiarity. I want to be part of the group, too, but if it's all about clocking those hours, it seems like it's going to take some time!

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"their zero gravity gear for a trip to the moon that evening" this killed me. Thank you.

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As someone who has moved seven times between five different states over the past 8 years, I sincerely appreciate your comment, Kate! I've felt an insecurity over our meandering path (that is hopefully leading us to settle down long-term somewhere over the next few years) in the "arriving late" to making lifelong geographically close friends category — this is such a great reframe. :) Thank you!

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FWIW, everyone’s I’ve known who has done Bob Marshall Wilderness horseback tour is absolutely not a tourist, most of them were very adventurous, active folks from Montana. I was seriously impressed that you did it and loved your writing on it.

This sentence is a masterpiece and hits on why I have an online presence - “our work is to be known, and it’s in the knowing that we delight.” Gosh, this nails it.

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This does make me feel better. <3

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i told my therapist that i wanted more community and she told me to always keep the ingredients on hand to make a pizza. she told me to google 6 ingredient pizza dough, and to have sauce and cheese. her point is, you don’t have to worry about spending money or going somewhere to eat or what to do. she also told me to unabashedly reach out to acquaintances. for some reason i have no embarrassment about this, but i think this is because i know that we are deeply craving connection and friendship, especially in our 30-somethings.

a new friend and i have bonded over losing parents, and she even came with me to go pick up a peloton i bought on facebook marketplace, but strangely enough our friendship began at improv shows. i felt weird asking for a favor of “can you come with me so i don’t get robbed or murdered” but she was down! never hurts to ask.

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ERRAND FRIENDS!!! God, those are the best.

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Thank you for your vulnerability. I wish I could say it gets easier, but I am 60 and I think it gets harder. People, naturally, hone their friend groups as they get more established, and there are decades of bonding that I’ll never catch up to. I think about moving as well, but don’t want to walk away from the hard won friendships I have in my current sphere (after a move 8 years ago). They were not trivial to build. Starting over to build a community feels too big. So I’ll keep building those for now. Thank you for the nudge. I’d be your friend.

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My mom is nearing 70, they moved back to Idaho from Ohio maybe 15 years ago, and she still feels lonely there sometimes. It's such work. And I'd be your friend too. <3

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I have been in a space for a few years now where I have downsized my friend group to a bare minimum, and it's been good and exactly what I needed and had the capacity for. But now that I have been at home for 8 months with my little baby (thank you, German parental leave system), it's the first time that I feel lonely sometimes. It doesn't help that my days are dictated by when my boobs are needed or when it's time for baby naps, because that leaves little time for socializing; it's also just being annoyed by other parents?!? Which does NOT help to make new mom-friends, let me tell ya! It's a weird in-between space where I crave more connection, but also am worried it will stress me out and/or send me into a comparison spiral. There wasn't anything in the Barbie movie about that, perchance? :D

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There *was* a part in the Barbie movie about a mom feeling boring and wanting to reclaim her life - does that count? 😂

But I hear this from several of my newer mom friends. They want other mom friends but the kid often dictates who because of their own friends and then it’s this whole kerfuffle. I’m trying to follow behind you and I imagine I will feel this deeply.

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It's close enough haha

And don't worry, on the plus side, having a baby DOES bring more opportunities to meet people - pre-natal classes, pregnancy and postpartum yoga & co, all the Mom & Me classes, etc. - maybe not as extensive where you are, but I am sure this will bring new friend options you're not even aware of currently! 😊

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Felt this one hard. It’s been tough in my own small-ish mountain town, as still recent-ish transplants (5 years). Thank you for the reminder to summon the energy and risk the embarrassment.

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I just went through the process of moving, building relationships for three years, and then...moving again! It's a process for sure and I took all those hours logged in college for granted 😲😰😥

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It's tough, and takes time.

It's a throw-away line, obviously, but there something to the asymmetry point you've walked into at the end. We readers have either achieved or or well on the way to our 96 hours of thinking about Kelton. You're way over that, I'm sure, thinking about your readership as a collective, but don't have even an hour in of thinking about Charley. It's the nature of the enterprise.

The same thing applies to your time with prospective friends in your communities. You don't have to be physically together all the time, but you have to count their time thinking about you, not your time thinking about them. Don't be shy about using your time with them not just doing fun things with people, but you can also tell them interesting stories from your life that they'll enjoy telling other people in their lives.

I recently joined Kiwanis, and learned after I did so that the program committee had been talking for 2 years about having me as a guest speaker. Big down payment on the hours right there.

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To be fair Charley, you do have at least an hour. That's the joy in people commenting — those are the ones that feel like my friends.

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Challenge accepted.

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