I recently went through an intense anxiety spell that made friends difficult. I’ve since improved and reconnected with a couple of old friends here where I live. Still, I want to make some new friends. It’s something I’ve never been good at and so I’ve been doing things to figure that out.

This experience makes me wish for a secular alternative to church. Churchgoers have an advantage when trying to find new friends. They have a lot of people around them on a regular basis.

There’s this formula I’ve got in my head.

1. Find a way to spend an extended amount of time with new people.
2. Get to know the new people and try to make some new friends among them.

The biggest concrete thing I’ve done in 1 is to sign up for interest in the fall/winter bowling leagues that are forming at local alleys. I miss bowling and this seems like a good opportunity. Hopefully a weekend league forms that I can go to because my job makes weekdays impossible.

The next thing I’ve done is to go over the Tucson groups on meetup.com’s app over and over looking for something I can get interested in. This one is tough. Most of the groups aren’t things I do, or am interested in doing, or are inconvenient in some way. I’m not musical, artistic, into photography, interested in book clubs… Meditation isn’t interactive, the hiking groups are hiking too far away for me to do regularly, the local atheist group has weekday activities, where are my people? Who are my people? My standards might have to shift and I may have to give something a try anyway though the thought gives me some anxiety. Maybe that’s a sign that I should do that. Maybe I could give a book club a try? There’re still other groups in there I haven’t mentioned and while I’m not philosophically inclined as far as knowing philosophers and their works I do like to discuss philosophical questions.

I’ve also explored local city community recreation centers. Unfortunately there’s nothing like a board with posts of people trying to organize things like at meetup. There’s an online list of activities to sign up for. And also unfortunately the overwhelming majority of activities are geared towards parents with children and not lonely 48 year olds. The one 18+ possibility was tai chi.

I also joined a couple of meeting and friend finding groups on Facebook. The meeting associated groups seem overrun with people advertising their businesses, like bars. I want to avoid bars. The friend finding group has more promise and I posted introducing myself. There are a bunch of people introducing themselves but not a lot of going and doing things so far. I may post and see who wants to go bowling or meet and chat at a coffee shop at some point soon.

A possibility is the app Nextdoor. I’m not sure how it can be used to make friends yet. But it’s a bunch of immediate neighbors posting. I’ve just started considering the possibility and I don’t have a lot of ideas about how to use Nextdoor here yet. But it seems possible.

Local publications that advertise events don’t really work out because they are usually one shot events and not something regular. I need a regular event for time around the same people.

I recently discovered that there are apps for friend finding. Like Bumble for Friends. I have not tried this yet and it’s on my list of things to do. It’s going to feel awkward though.

In my experience some people make friends at work. How does that work? I’m by myself at the car dealership where I work, I clean the shop. It’s just me. So no one with a similar job to talk to. Everyone is busy doing their own things while I do my thing and I don’t know anything about their things. Still, I sometimes chat at lunch which I take at a time most others don’t. Maybe something can happen someday. I arrive later and usually leave last. Maybe I’m missing something or my anxiety is getting to me somewhere.

Finally there is volunteer work. I’m working on this with my therapist but when I think about volunteering I get anxious and sad. I don’t know why. That’s not a good thing. I should be able to help out and there’s something deeper going on I need to figure out. There’s also the tension of volunteering to make friends when the volunteer work should be at least as important. I wouldn’t be doing it for the right reasons.

I’m going to keep at it. The longing for connection won’t let me do anything else.

Anyone have any thoughts? Have I missed something? What’s worked for you when making friends as an adult?