How to live near your friends
prigoose.substack.com
prigoose.substack.com
I have a group of 20 to 30 friends nearby. Walkable, east coast, not NYC, fun friendly place to live.
It's amazing how fast one badly-behaved person can create chaos and uproar in a group like this. People take sides, or they try not to take sides, or they ignore cruel behaviors because they don't want to rock the boat.
I'm still friends with almost everyone, mostly because I now have really strict boundaries re privacy, after weathering a couple of these local incidents.
It can work. It works best if you keep some stuff private, and save it for your non-proximate crew.
In the immortal words of Hank Williams, "If you mind your own business then you won't be minding mine ... If you mind your own business you'll stay busy all the time."
In my own journey, my first wife and I travelled half way around the world to join an intentional meditation community of more than 1,000 in the US. We were young and delusional. While memorable experiences were had, the community as a whole fractured through inevitable evolution of lifestyle differences, political differences, divorces (and intermarriage) and subtle but extremely important differences in values, morals and ethics. It is all too easy for the passion of like mindedness to mask the much deeper core values of your own familial and cultural background, to which I find most people return later in life.
This is so universal, there must be a name for it: Our assumption that if someone shares our passion for meditation, or climate activism, or lean startup, etc., they must be just like us. I still do this! Best I can say is, I've shortened the interval to when Rational Brain overrides Tribal Brain and says no, we share a passion, otherwise we have little in common.
If I may ask, how long did you stay in the community, were you there when the worst drama happened, and what drove you out?
I'm curious what happens in the 50s and 60s. Once kids leave home and careers are established or winding down towards retirement, what happens to the social circle?
My neighborhood group I described above is mostly that demographic, some younger, some older.
When the kids leave for college or work, the adults look for other adults to play with. It's a fun stage of life. This group likes outdoorsy things, hiking, canoeing, camping, skiing, along with the usual potlucks and barbecues.
Despite the occasional drama, it's mostly been a blast. Human nature's much the same everywhere - the core dynamics don't change in older vs younger groups. At least in my observation.
Like, maybe this works in NYC for some dedicated people, but in less dense, less hip, less young, less trendy settings, none of these things work, or at least they're not very relevant.
Like, maybe it would work if I moved to a very posh place in SoMa, and I had a bunch of girlfriends who I could tantalize with the location and the decor and the rooftop nightclub. But I don't, won't, and almost no one does, either.
The coolest event at my neighborhood cafe is homework club and it's a couple doors down from a fraternal Eagles Lounge with a pool table and a jukebox. There are plenty of places to live listed on Zillow, although they're neither cheap nor necessarily very nice. Most people I know work from home, rarely leave home, and lead lives of Netflix.
It sounds like the author deliberately moved to NYC. They didn't just accidentally end up in a place where this is possible.
When I think of the qualities that attract me to the city where my highschool was, it's only that I'd be closer to my aging grandparents. Any friends I'm still in contact with I see just about as much as I would if I lived there. Beyond that, there isn't one single redeeming quality that can be discretely taken advantage of.
Second, this advice is being offered without caveats or reservations, whereas it really only makes sense in Brooklyn and places that resemble it closely in density, walkability, and affluence.
I guess my point was that advice for making and keeping new friends depends on their being a decent pool of people around, and if you don't have that, solve that problem first, unless you're ok with where you live for whatever reason.
Because I do have friends back home in suburban Canada, and they are struggling to expand their friend group outside of work, going into their 30s. My advice to them is to try and increase the frequency with which you're likely ot meet people in a common setting that you like to spend time in, and the city itself does not facilitate that in any meaningful way. So the first step is to move somewhere more conducive to that.
I guess I could blow up my life here and just start completely over somewhere else, but I'm kind of afraid that it won't be any different wherever I end up moving to, given my age.
If I were forced to move back home to the city of ~700k, I'd simply only select a few of the neighborhoods where I'd be likely to bump into people, or get to chatting with someone at the gym or whatever. Making new friends is still hard and takes work and luck, but positioning yourself to make that hard process more enjoyable is something I think a lot of people can benefit from.
Williamsburg and Silicon Valley are extremes of particular personalities and age groups I'd think, but even within that you're going to have some people who are roughly a similar older age with similar interests.
Edit: I'd expand on this idea a little. Making and keeping friends is hard, and is the result of circumstance, discovery. Some things help.
A frequent interval of being around some of the same people for some time increases the likelihood you'll get to recognize them and discover if you have chemistry or any piece of common group. That's why work is most people's default, but it's a dangerous default.
School is a better model, you're paying to be there and there's plenty to talk about.
When I visit friends in the suburbs, it's always fine, I'm happy to see them, but it's very much a druve to and from or transit to and from kind of thing. Some people like that, they like that, but it's not as much my vibe.
Moving somewhere medium dense and walkable, in your own small town or otherwise, won't necessarily mean your life blows up for the good or bad, but it has the potential to change your opportunities, or those of your kids, in my opinion.
One thing I forgot to add earlier is that (I think) it really helps to spend time somewhere around others for no particular reason (hanging out). I wouldn't expect someone to come over and chat if I'm on my laptop with headphones on. But if I'm just sitting there with a coffee not doing anything specific? Maybe I chat with someone nearby if they're doing similar.
Same thing at the public fitness bars in the park. Ya I'm there to workout I guess, but really I'm there to enjoy life, and have got to meet a few of the familiar faces around.
The magic of moving somewhere new is that you unseat yourself, and you have to go and find some new places to be. It's also the tricky bit of working remotely or at all, because at least for me I tend to sit in front of my computer most of the day. Best to spend at least a few months totally unemployed as crazy as that sounds.
Putting any more time into this seems like a waste of life.
But they do work amazingly well for instagram / tiktok.
This sounds like collecting casual "facebook friends" rather than making actual human connections, practical considerations of maintaining those friendships aside: "Individuals, he says, generally have up to five people in the closest layer. The next closest layer contains an additional 10, the one beyond that an extra 35, and the final group another 100. So cumulatively, the layers contain five, 15, 50, and 150 people." quoting an article referencing Dunbar's research (https://www.technologyreview.com/2016/04/29/160438/your-brai... )
Moving to a new city is hard, and even harder if you have not made any friends after a year. I don't know whether this is a specific dig at NY, but most people who move to a new city would expect to socialize with a few 'new friends' within the year.
Amount of disposable income and time needed is less than you think.
- I don't have friends nearby, so I'd be mostly having a "come one, come all" potluck with strangers in my building.
- All the units in my building are the same, so no one is curious to come over.
- About half the units are corporate apartments rented by Google for visiting employees and applicants.
- No one uses the online message board, except the leasing office employees.
Hosting dinner parties regularly even if you're tired is a great idea. I'm going to try doing this.
I probably don't want to co-sign an apartment, but letting people stay with me for a long-ish period of time sounds good. That seems doable for someone on a typical Facebook / Google / etc income.