I haven’t figured this out entirely, but I’ve found a partial solution in being part of a men’s group.

We meet weekly to discuss our feelings.

After a couple years in that group, one of the other guys requested that someone call him a few times per week because he needed an impetus to keep moving. He was battling depression and laziness, and wanted someone to check in on him.

I volunteered to call him three times a week. It was only going to be a few weeks at first, but we kept it up.

Now it’s been about six months of me calling him on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday morning. I told him I’d be happy to call him like this for the next fifty years if that’s what it takes.

I live alone, and don’t really see anyone on a regular basis except for this group. I don’t know my neighbors, nor anyone in my neighborhood. I’ve considered joining a church to have some community, but I don’t want to distort my relationship with God.

But this morning I spoke with that guy. He’s not physically present, but our ongoing commitment to this phone call schedule creates an abstract “meeting place” where we encounter each other regularly.

It really works. It’s like sharing a kitchen with someone, and bumping into them there on a recurring basis.

I think it would be great if more people made arrangements like that. I think it would be great if there were a community here on Lemmy just for the purpose of setting such arrangements up.

Regular, recurring connection is magic.

In college I had a classmate that I enjoyed speaking with. Somehow we decided that we were going to have breakfast every Saturday morning at Le Peep, just the two of us.

We did that for an entire year of college, and it formed a deep bond. We became best friends, as a result of seeing each other regularly.

I myself don’t have the bandwidth to take on a lot of such connections, but if anyone is interested in trying such an arrangement please respond to this comment and y’all can pair off.

The arrangement I would propose is this:

• Set up a recurring schedule. Same time on the same day every week
• One of you calls the other
• Have some specific questions planned, in order to kick start the conversation. With this guy from my men’s group, I started off by asking him three questions: “How are you feeling right now? How did yesterday go in terms of your plans and objectives? What are your plans/objectives for today?” This was to help him keep moving in the depression/laziness he was experiencing. Now after months we’ve abandoned the formulaic structure and we just talk
• Treat it as important. Stick to the commitment and make the calls. Lots of people don’t stick to their commitments, and that sucks. Commitment creates consistency, and consistency is the heart of community.

If anyone would like to experiment with this, I can call you regularly for a short period of time to teach you how it’s done. I can’t afford a lot of long-term commitments right now, but I’d be happy to put in some effort to help people understand the technique.