I don’t know that book, but I enjoy eating alone. Sometimes when I used to work at an office, I would leave early for lunch because I wanted to eat alone. Other

I don’t know that book, but I enjoy eating alone. Sometimes when I used to work at an office, I would leave early for lunch because I wanted to eat alone. Other days I would wait for people to eat with a group. Your description of the book appears to be those are advice for professional networking, not friendships. I think you are right tb at friendships are not under your control (although you, obviously, have influence). But answering your question… I was at a point of my life with 40+ years old that I thought I would never (or wanted to) make new friends. Totally ok with that. But then I decided to write a novel and enrolled in a fiction writing course. The course had a few characteristics. It was long. Every Thursday from March to November we would meet online. The teacher had an approach of quickly summarizing a topic and leave the rest of the class for discussion. So, it was not just a bunch of people listening a lecture with the camera and mic off. We were talking with each other all the time. Also, it was a topic that everyone was very invested in and generated initiatives to continue to talk about it outside of regular Thursday classes, like a Telegram group first and then an extra-official meeting almost every Tuesday. When you spend almost a year, talking to the same 20 people once or twice a week, about a topic you care, you create some opportunity for new friendships. So I do now, two years later, consider that I have made a few new friends. The unlucky part is that those people are from all over the country, just one or two in my city. And, of course, for now, they are not like old friendships that I have. But, who knows, in twenty years or so they might still be around and be really close friends. So that’s how I started new friendships