Just about everything in life becomes more meaningful if you can share it with others. The Swedish have a wonderful proverb: shared joy is a double joy, shared sorrow is half a sorrow.
But - what if you don't have very many people in your life to share your joys (or sorrows) with? It doesn't make life very exciting. In fact, it can make your life incredibly dull. I'm speaking from experience.
I'm very aware that if I had more friends living near me to have fun with, I don't think I would in the predicament I'm in and quite possibly this blog wouldn't even exist. It's not that I don't have people in my life, it's just that my closest friends live hundreds of miles away. No good.
Solution? Make new friends. Easier said than done. I've lived in London for a few years now but I've been struggling to meet new people here. I'd had some unpleasant experiences before moving here and had closed myself off from other people in an attempt to keep me from getting hurt. I'm also quite a self-sufficient person so am happy in my own company, even for longer periods of time. My somewhat introvert personality is certainly not helping. I've also realised that when you're younger people just seem to be popping up everywhere. Not so a few decades later. So no, I haven't found it very easy at all.
But not to worry, things are starting to look brighter. I've recently started coming out of my shell and open myself up more for new people.
In the summer I had a goal of joining a group, any group. I'm quite certain that if I hadn't written about it here I wouldn't have done anything about it. But alas, there it stood in my blog post and I would've felt really quite useless if I hadn't done it. And so I entered the world of Meetup (that's Meetup.com). Or more correctly re-entered the world of Meetup. I'd joined a knitting group before and enjoyed going to meetings but then my elbow started giving me a hard time and was having none of it so I had to stop knitting. Not much point in going to the meetups anymore.
So I started again. Joining the first group was not too bad. Going to the first meeting I nearly turned around on my way there and ran home. But no, I forced myself onwards. I'm glad that I did because I met some interesting people that night and had far more fun than I'd expected. I've been to more meetings since.
I've now joined a couple of groups and it's becoming easier and easier. One of them is for gluten intolerant people. I've been to one meeting so far and had a meal with 5 other coeliacs/gluten intolerant people. I haven't been gluten intolerant for very long, just over a year, and in my everyday life I'm very alone with this condition and tend to stand out with my requirements when it comes to food. Now for the first time I was one of six, we were all the same. Someone else asked the waitress to tell us what we could eat off the menu, I didn't need to do it. I felt normal. And that felt so wonderful that I said it out loud to the group and we toasted to it. I guess you'd need to be gluten intolerant or have some other limiting condition to understand how exciting it was to meet other people who were the same and understood you. Result!
The wonderful thing about Meetup is that when you join a group, it asks you about your interests. You tick this box and that and the next thing you know you start receiving emails about someone having set up a brand new meetup group about something that you find quite interesting and then you join one and start going to meetings. And if you're really brave, you can set up your own group.
So if you're like me and would like to have more people in your life, try these two simple steps:
Just today I joined yet another group (I'm joining groups left, right and centre right now). It's for hikers. The last time I went hiking was on a group holiday in the southwest US (you can read about it here) but hey, there's actually no need to cross the Atlantic every time I want to go hiking, it can be done right here in England, too. It's just the traveller in me who always wants to go the distance to the other side of the world. There's even a hike this Sunday; the only drawback is that it starts at 10am. What to do: do I get up early for the hike or do I have a much needed and well-deserved lie-in? How exciting is a lie-in? Not very. Argh! I'm really going to have to have an early start, aren't I?
But - what if you don't have very many people in your life to share your joys (or sorrows) with? It doesn't make life very exciting. In fact, it can make your life incredibly dull. I'm speaking from experience.
I'm very aware that if I had more friends living near me to have fun with, I don't think I would in the predicament I'm in and quite possibly this blog wouldn't even exist. It's not that I don't have people in my life, it's just that my closest friends live hundreds of miles away. No good.
Solution? Make new friends. Easier said than done. I've lived in London for a few years now but I've been struggling to meet new people here. I'd had some unpleasant experiences before moving here and had closed myself off from other people in an attempt to keep me from getting hurt. I'm also quite a self-sufficient person so am happy in my own company, even for longer periods of time. My somewhat introvert personality is certainly not helping. I've also realised that when you're younger people just seem to be popping up everywhere. Not so a few decades later. So no, I haven't found it very easy at all.
But not to worry, things are starting to look brighter. I've recently started coming out of my shell and open myself up more for new people.
In the summer I had a goal of joining a group, any group. I'm quite certain that if I hadn't written about it here I wouldn't have done anything about it. But alas, there it stood in my blog post and I would've felt really quite useless if I hadn't done it. And so I entered the world of Meetup (that's Meetup.com). Or more correctly re-entered the world of Meetup. I'd joined a knitting group before and enjoyed going to meetings but then my elbow started giving me a hard time and was having none of it so I had to stop knitting. Not much point in going to the meetups anymore.
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| Totally non-related to this post but aren't these colours pretty? |
So I started again. Joining the first group was not too bad. Going to the first meeting I nearly turned around on my way there and ran home. But no, I forced myself onwards. I'm glad that I did because I met some interesting people that night and had far more fun than I'd expected. I've been to more meetings since.
I've now joined a couple of groups and it's becoming easier and easier. One of them is for gluten intolerant people. I've been to one meeting so far and had a meal with 5 other coeliacs/gluten intolerant people. I haven't been gluten intolerant for very long, just over a year, and in my everyday life I'm very alone with this condition and tend to stand out with my requirements when it comes to food. Now for the first time I was one of six, we were all the same. Someone else asked the waitress to tell us what we could eat off the menu, I didn't need to do it. I felt normal. And that felt so wonderful that I said it out loud to the group and we toasted to it. I guess you'd need to be gluten intolerant or have some other limiting condition to understand how exciting it was to meet other people who were the same and understood you. Result!
The wonderful thing about Meetup is that when you join a group, it asks you about your interests. You tick this box and that and the next thing you know you start receiving emails about someone having set up a brand new meetup group about something that you find quite interesting and then you join one and start going to meetings. And if you're really brave, you can set up your own group.
So if you're like me and would like to have more people in your life, try these two simple steps:
- join a group of people with similar interests to yours
- start saying yes to every invitation you get, even if you don't really feel like it.
Just today I joined yet another group (I'm joining groups left, right and centre right now). It's for hikers. The last time I went hiking was on a group holiday in the southwest US (you can read about it here) but hey, there's actually no need to cross the Atlantic every time I want to go hiking, it can be done right here in England, too. It's just the traveller in me who always wants to go the distance to the other side of the world. There's even a hike this Sunday; the only drawback is that it starts at 10am. What to do: do I get up early for the hike or do I have a much needed and well-deserved lie-in? How exciting is a lie-in? Not very. Argh! I'm really going to have to have an early start, aren't I?
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