Throughout my life I have always been in a situation where I am surrounded with people my own age, and therefore I have always had a built-in pool of people to make friends with. That has changed now that I am in New Paltz. My fellow faculty members are all around 50 years old or so (I am such a bad judge of age, so I hope that offends no one who eventually may read this). Of the other faculty that I was hired with, maybe about 3 or 4 are my age, and they don't seem to go out much. Even at some of the school receptions I've been to most people seem older. This is not to say that my friends have to be my age, but it helps to be in the same life stage and have the same issues going on. I do have one friend here who went to my high school (though we didn't really hang out then) and now we coincidentally find ourselves in the same random city. We go to trivia (pub quiz) every week and have a great time. And now I have been going out to a weekly lunch with other young science faculty. They are great guys, so hopefully we will eventually hang out outside of lunch and actually be more friends. Though I feel there is a bit of awkwardness with getting too friendly with a married guy before you meet his wife. Maybe I'm just weird about that.
Anyway, since my work-provided social options are somewhat limited, and I now have more free time to devote to these kinds of things, I am forcing myself to go forth into the world and try to meet people and make friends. (Another motivation is that I have a milestone birthday coming up in 3 weeks and I am getting a bit depressed thinking that I will have no one to celebrate it with.) So tonight I am going to go all by myself to the local brewery, which supposedly has the most happening happy hour around. In theory I may run into people I know there, but who knows? Some of you may be surprised to hear this, but I am actually a fairly shy person. I definitely came out of my shell in college and grad school, but when it comes to situations where I don't know anyone I am still pretty shy. I am not looking forward to hitting a bar by myself! But I do need to get out there and meet people. Then tomorrow night I am going to go with my department chair to a swing dance benefit. I have no idea how to swing dance, so this adds an extra level of awkwardness to the proposition. And it is generally my rule of thumb to not go to a dance without male friends to dance with. But alas I will be at the mercy of the nice guy gods to provide some quality companions. It should be interesting!
I also eventually want to start having people over for dinner parties and party parties, but sadly my house is still a construction zone so that will have to wait for a while.
It feels very weird to have to actively make friends and talk about it, like I am 5 years old on the first day of school or something. But such is my life now, I suppose. Wish me luck!
I think ALL people have some level of shyness because it is really just hard to make friends in a new city. It feels like it takes so much energy and commitment to get out there and meet people. Go you for getting out there! Enjoy your night at the brewery; drink some yummy beer for me.
ReplyDeleteYou know me, I am hypersocial. I moved to a big city, and to a very big institute, and even then it took a while to make friends around here. I guess the older one gets, the longer that process of finding friends takes. I'm sure in a few months you'll be in a different situation, but in the mean time, your planned activities sound great. I'm curious to hear how it went at the brewery!.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree that the older we get the harder it is to make friends. I've been in my current city for just over 4 years, and I'm really just starting to make some really good friends.
ReplyDeleteGood luck at the brewery, and at the swing dance benefit!