Basically what the title says, two questions:
- Do you feel lonely or socially isolated?
- If you are, what are you trying to change that?
According to the WHO it’s an epidemic,
I’ve been emigrating to different countries about every 15 years and had to rebuild a network of friends from scratch every time. The younger I was the easier it was obviously. But that is a lot of work and you need to invest time and energy which I sometimes don’t have so much, especially now with a small child which needs a lot of attention.
We meet up as a family with other families about once a month and it’s really great, but while my wife keeps in contact with the other mothers in between online, somehow we dads don’t even have a group chat where we would do that and perhaps propose to meet up, it’s always the women who propose it.
It’s kind of weird that its like that and I should change it.
While the WHO doesn’t call it outright an epidemic, it seems they think it’s such a big problem that they created a specific commission to foster social connection: https://www.who.int/news/item/15-11-2023-who-launches-commission-to-foster-social-connection
I was feeling disconnected from my friends for quite a while. I find I have a hard time keeping up with people, and that usually ends up meaning I am no one’s best friend.
I’ve done two things:
- Organised a (mostly) weekly poker night (not for money but for snacks). Any board game would work. It gets us in the same room and we have a grand old time. This is the highlight of my week. It really helped to have something to look forward to each week when I was feeling depressed and meaningless.
- Started sending my two closest friends one (1) meme per day tailored to them specifically. It’s rare for me to message anyone, but this keeps me in contact, even if it’s basically like a poke on Facebook. It keeps me fresh in their heads. It usually ends up sparking a convo about this or that. It’s led to me being invited to a couple of fun events, which feels really nice, because for a while there I was barely invited to anything.
These two things, while simple, have greatly increased my mood and has gotten me much closer with my friends than I was before, as I had drifted apart from them.
