Yes, New Friends

A couple months ago I began writing a post. It was going to start with a pun about Drake and DJ Khaled not wanting new friends while that’s all I wanted. As you can tell, I never posted that blog entry and I never finished writing it. Now, I wish I had because I am in a completely different space. But the story is still just as important.

Making new friends has always been a task but it usually wasn’t too difficult for me. Not to say I’m so awesome that everyone wants to be my friend; but I’m awesome and virtually everyone wants to be my friend, (jokes but not really). The reason why making new friends was so easy for me was because I was in school. So obviously most of my friends came from school. Common situations, daily lives, goals, life stages, etc. It was easy to connect. But now that I am a college graduate, in a new state, working in a place where mostly everyone has a higher rank than me, I wondered: How was I going to make friends? And by wondered, I mean worried.

The first thing I do when I can’t solve a problem is to consult my best friend Google. It seemed really backwards to go online to discover how to make friends in real life. But hey, its 2013! Catfish exists for a reason.

During my internet search I stumbled upon a site called Meetup.com. And well, its basically a site for people to meetup. The first weekend I moved into Hell..I mean my current place of residence…I scoured the website to find and join groups that matched my interests. The next weekend I ventured out to my very first Meetup. I traveled to Greenwich Village for the first time to meet 5 females in their 20s at a bar. Now that I think about it, I think it was my first time going to an actual bar not during club hours. The evening was interesting, the girls were friendly but it wasn’t a group I would meet with again unless I had absolutely no one else to hangout with. Which, at the time, I didn’t. But that’s not the point. Regardless, the night was a success because I didn’t end up as an inspiration for an episode of Law and Order: SVU. That was pretty much my goal.

The next weekend I attended a meetup for a rooftop dinner. Just reading the sentence “Rooftop Dinner. bring your own wine” made me feel like I was in Sex and the City. Unfortunately, due to the weather, the rooftop didn’t quite workout. But it was still an interesting time to say the least. After this second meetup I realized one of the reasons why it’s so hard to make friends as an “adult.” There’s no guarantee you are interested in common situations, live similar daily lives, have similar goals or are at the same life stages. I was becoming the Goldielocks of meetup. I could only hope the third time was a charm.

The very next night I RSVP’d to attend a birthday celebration for a stranger! Awesomely strange. But strangely smart. At least you won’t spend it alone. Although I was a little discouraged from the two meetups prior I was optimistic about this group because it was specifically for people in their early 20s who are new to New York. By the end of the night/beginning of the next morning I bar hopped, walked the streets of New York, saw a young fellow twerk for a cab, ate at a diner for breakfast and walked away with my two new besties. Mission complete. Needless to say I haven’t been on a meetup again but I definitely will recommend it to anyone. For the past two months, I’ve been out every weekend with my new friends and it’s just so great to be able to talk to people in similar situations who get me and make me feel a little less home and college sick.

The moral of this story is: New friends are awesome, despite what you may hear on the radio.

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