Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwup238 | Hacker News Reader

> (unwalkable towns where all of the houses are big garages in the front and no porches)

You can turn the garage into a hangout spot. A neighbor has a full bar with communal table plus TV for sports and he opens up the garage door once a week on a schedule (Sunday game day or whatever depending on the season) and whenever he feels like it on work week evenings. As people pass by we invite them over and after a few months everyone knows that when the garage is open, they can come over for a drink and to shoot the shit. Low pressure social interactions that often turn into weekend outings, regular poker games, etc.

Now years later we get impromptu block parties when he brings out the grill onto the driveway. It’s done wonders for our community in an otherwise unwalkable SoCal suburb.

View on HN

This works wonders. I did it accidentally. In March 2020 when my gym closed, I started working out every night in the garage. After a couple of weeks a neighbor who I only ever said "hi" to wondered by and asked if he could join since his gym was closed. After a while more showed up, and now I have like 12 people every day show up. One Friday someone brought a bottle of whiskey and we hung out after the workout and now weekly happy hours are a regular occurrence. The neighbors who don't workout stop by after the workout for happy hour. It's almost become expected and folks schedule their weeks around it so that they can be there for drinks in the evening. As a super introvert nerd, I never thought I'd be the center of community in my neighborhood.

This is something I absolutely would not feel comfortable doing unless I was warmly encouraged to join in, that's how I've been turned into a social outcast in my youth. I know some people who for a fact feel the same way.

Maybe one solution is therapy, to help massage them out of their shell, to help them learn to be vulnerable and unafraid and friendly. But many of them refuse to go to therapy for whatever reason also.

These are things I will be running into as I try to resolve this. I have already encountered a young man named Daniel who remembered me, and told me that he was hospitalized, and that the thought of me and my sign helped him get through it. I'm dealing with people on all spectrums of mental health.

In fact, maybe that's kind of the point. I'm trying to reach out to people who refuse to go to therapy, who have internal thoughts berating them all day long, and I have the unique opportunity of helping them through the darkness and into the light of the truth, that they are valuable and lovable, if only people saw the true them, and trusted them to become that.

Yep. I grew up in the era of ‘stranger danger’. We were explicitly taught as kids to fear strangers and socialising. We were taught “don’t be rude and butt in to conversations uninvited”, etc.

Still, something else is off. In the 90s, the Internet was a way to expand your social circle. So many friends made on IRC groups that moved into real life.

Nowadays yeah, commenting on Reddit and chatting to friends in message groups does feel like socialising, even though you might go two weeks without seeing anyone other than coworkers, cashiers (maybe) and Uber Eats delivery drivers.

> This is something I absolutely would not feel comfortable doing

Part of it I think is to endure the uncomfortable for a bit.

I felt really uncomfortable in social settings, and still do sometimes. But I forced myself to ignore those feelings. Now I'm at a point that if people think I'm weird or whatever then that's their problem.

I try not to be rude, be considerate and such thing, I'm not totally unhinged. But I am much more relaxed about just being me. Sometimes it doesn't work, but often it's all good.

I am affected by extreme conscientiousness and would be described as a social outcast in my current state I'm sure.

I've always had a decent social network through proximity alone (neighborhood, education, etc.) and in this comfort, built a harsh prejudice against outgoing behavior. I'm not even sure why I held this perspective so deeply for so long, but I reviled the thought of intruding on others and only warranted intrusion on those I judged willful intruders. Most of my relationships are sufficiently available, but not very deep given my refusal to assert vulnerably (including against others vulnerabilities).

I was lucky to find Dostoevsky, Camus, and Hesse notably, which helped break some of my absurd dispositions. However, my entire social network was still rotten on a basis of inauthentic connection and intellectualizing this can only go so far. You must live the perspective and it is hard and vulnerable.

Thank you for these words, I find your mission deeply humane and I strive to live through a similar spirit.

on my son's bday i drug our firepit out to the front yard and setup some chairs for my wife and I to welcome his friends as they arrived. Maybe a dozen people in our neighborhood walking their dog or out for a run just dropped by to say hello and talk. I guess the fire looked very inviting (it was a chilly evening). I'm going to start doing it regularly, it's an easy way to meet people in your community.

In some neighborhoods the neighbors would call the police about your illegal open fire. It's nice that your neighbors are cool with it.

This is totally badass. Makes me want to clean out my garage for just such a thing.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com