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The key is realizing that you have agency over this stuff Look at the things you want or need to do day-to-day, and create contexts around those where social f
by brundolf 4y ago
The key is realizing that you have agency over this stuff
Look at the things you want or need to do day-to-day, and create contexts around those where social fabric can form
Instead of working from home, work from the same coffee shop a couple times a week. Make small talk with the people behind the counter and the other regulars, learn names
Have remote coworkers who live in the same city as you? Suggest a regular trivia night at a bar. Or host a weekly D&D or board-games night at your apartment
Create parties, cook people dinner, suggest day-trips to do fun things
Reach out, organize, offer to host, make small talk with new people even if it's not especially interesting right off the bat. But get curious, ask about the details, pull on threads, and you'll get past the boilerplate pretty fast
If you're literally starting from zero it can be hard - maybe you just have to seek out meetups or whatever as a starting point - but you have the ability to create change. A social fabric is a thing you cultivate, not something that just happens to you like the weather. Took me many years to learn that, but it's true
I don't mean to make it sound easy- for some of us, keeping a healthy social life is as hard as keeping a healthy diet or exercise routine is for others. But you do have agency over it
- ravagat 4y agoGreat comment! It baffles me how people don't realize that they have agency over things like this in their lives.
- jwestbury 4y agoHaving agency is different from having capacity. Lots of us simply don't have the energy to coordinate our social lives to this extent. That's the benefit of a third place, or even just an office.
- ravagat 4y agoCapacity? Like amount to produce? I'm sorry but reading what you wrote, you seem to be self-defeating yourself by putting the responsibility on to the third place or office. There's nothing hard nor easy about coordinating a social life per say, it is simple though. It's literally a fundamental life skill that falls under communication, is it not? I'd love to help or offer suggestions.
- brundolf 4y agoI sympathize, but I look at (energy/emotional) capacity for life things like this as a resource, and there's such thing as poverty. But poverty is a state to be in, not a fixed fact of your life Climbing out of it means finding room around the edges, small things you do have the capacity to chip away at, and making yourself more and more room that you can then use to make more and more progress. The same goes for social stuff and for increasing your capacity in general
- Gigachad 4y agoThis is all so tiring. I've spend the last 2 years trying to recreate the social experience of working in office and you end up burning all your free time and energy trying to coordinate complex schedules and hunting down people to interact with. I'm never taking a job which is primarily remote again. I want my free time back. I want to spend the after work period relaxing at home instead of scrutinizing meetup.com for events and PMing my whole contact list frequently to work out when people are free to do things.
- brundolf 4y agoThe hope is to cultivate things to where it becomes self-sustaining, and goes beyond the surface-level meetup.com events and boilerplate small-talk. Digging deeper to form more-than-acquaintance relationships where people naturally want to interact more. It's not always easy, and sometimes things fizzle out. If it continues to feel forced with certain people, sometimes you just need to move on until you find relationships that stick. But the goal is for it to not keep being tiring indefinitely I sympathize, I know it can be hard, but I think it's possible for most people to do
- ravagat 4y agoHi, I get what you mean and I know it can be hard. I want to add that maybe you should try to not recreate the social exp. of working in the office and instead create something different. Some ways to look/frame this is think about which parts of the in-office exp. resonates with you and try to find that micro experience in another different type of experience. I may wording this wrong but I hope you got what I mean
- rchaud 4y ago> Instead of working from home, work from the same coffee shop a couple times a week. This isn't workable at all in my experience. Most coffee shops are far too loud to have a call in; depending on your work, you might not always have calls only at neatly scheduled times. Post-pandemic, many indoor dining spots have basically become fulfillment centers for UberEats and DoorDash and that includes coffee shops. Employees serve the drive-thru line and delivery pickup guys first, and are constantly working.
- brundolf 4y agoDepends where you are and where you go, I guess. My favorite coffee shop doesn't have a drive-through, and I'm on a name basis with several people who work there. They'll ask me what's been going on if I haven't been around in a while, and I've chatted with a couple of patrons too over time I don't have many work calls, to be fair, but when I do I can usually just migrate outside and be okay
- riskneutral 4y agoGood advice. Sports are also good.