When the game Words With Friends first came out, I was hooked. I was also quite good at it, and soon enough some of my friends didn’t want to play with me anymore. I decided to play with a random partner.
We began the game, and I used all my letters two turns in a row. The person at the other end went ballistic, sending me messages through the app about cheating. Called me horrible names even I with a foul mouth would not repeat here. I did whatever you did back then to end the game so it counted as a win for the other person.
Apparently, that was not enough. More horrible messages. I shut down the game. Somehow the person managed to send me messages anyway. I finally had to delete the app. I’ve never played again. Dale said I was a bit obsessive anyway, so it wasn’t all bad.
Then along came the NY Times, which I am still reading for free through this link. I have an account, and I have the NY Times app on my phone. You do not need to subscribe to anything to have an account.
To read for free, I log out of my account, click to redeem the code and then log back into the app. That gives me about four days of reading pleasure, and then I simply do it again. It just takes seconds.
Soon enough I was seduced by the puzzles. I now subscribe to this section only for about $20 a year. My favorite is called Spelling Bee. The goal is to make as many words as possible using the letter in the middle. You get little rewards along the way … starting with beginner and ending at genius. Extra points for using all the letters in a single word. My goal is to find the pangram and make genius by 5 p.m.
So, yes, I can be a bit obsessive. But it’s fun! It’s like Words with Friends but you don’t actually need friends. The perfect game for a loner (but not the serial killer type).
It’s not that I don’t have friends, but they seem to be scattered all over the world. Dale and I are not good at making new friends. We’re not joiners, we don’t have children and we don’t go to church. I guess you could say we don’t thrive in large group settings. I wonder why we both ended up in the Army. But that’s another story.
Anyway, there is hope.
I met two women playing golf. We all liked each other and thought our husbands might like each other, too. None of the men played golf, which is unusual. All are studious types who enjoy reading, music, cooking and gardening. We set up a dinner date!
Honestly, I wasn’t sure we’d know how to behave. It has been so long since we’ve mingled with anyone as a couple. Dinner was at one of the couple’s home Tuesday evening. We had a fantastic time. The men are all unique characters, but they had so much in common it was almost creepy. I knew it was good when they started quoting lines from Commander Cody songs.
It’s funny. We didn’t really want to go because we are so used to our little routines. But it was great to socialize, and now we want to branch out. Maybe it will be our turn to host the next dinner.
All in all, I think the first step to being social is changing your mindset. We’ve become reclusive. I mean, I freak out if the doorbell rings. Step 2 is the hard part. How do you actually make new friends? Have you been successful? What’s your secret?
Good questions. After years of work and forced socializing, I love the solitude of home. My partner and I hang out and go out and are happy, but recently we went out to breakfast with some neighbors and it was actually fun. Not sure how we go about making more friends.
I love Words with Friends. There is this one gal that I play and we are pretty evenly matched.
Oh, yes, the dreaded forced socializing. I don’t miss that, either. We have some nice neighbors, so that’s an idea.
My social circle has shifted. The klatch that I did a lot of socializing with seems to connect less often. I wouldn’t go so far as to say this circle has come to an end but even the usual birthday gatherings are getting more sporadic. The shift seemed to occur as we retired. You’d think that we’d be able to connect more often & regularly without the commitment of work but the opposite seems to be true. I’m not big into social media and I think that has created some disconnect as well. My immediate family circle has expanded with grandchildren; young people get partners. It gets more complicated and time-consuming. I find there are so many more opportunities to say yes to and I have to admit that it’s both refreshing and demanding at times. It serves me to have more than one circle; some are for the “tupperware talk” and some are for the down and dirty. How do I make new friends? I start with getting involved in activities that I’m interested in, i.e. hosting house concerts, game nights, volunteering at community events, self-care/personal growth pursuits. I enjoy cooking (and eating) so gathering around a meal is an easy in for me. Then I let a relationship evolve. Maintaining friendships takes effort with some friendships being easier than others.
Interesting. I never thought of myself as shy, but I am hesitant to host outings and invite people to join me. It’s a great idea, but for some reason, I am reluctant. Obviously, I need to work on this! Thank you for sharing your perspective — quite helpful.
Having recently moved to a new area two years ago, we’ve actually just gone through the long pro ess of re-seedin g our friends basket, so here are my tips, which I’ll attempt to modify for a non-joiner. 😆
1) Make up little contact cards, and hand them out to anyone you meet that you feel you made a connection with. I’ve done this countless times since moving, when a chance conversation seemed an indicator of a good connection. At least half the time I’ve heard back, and set a subsequent date to get together, usually for a walk followed by coffee. And about half of those have ‘taken’ and generated future get togethers. So that’s a 25% success rate! I had my little contact cards (business card sized) printed at Syaples, using their online layout tool.
Meeting people seems to work best when you are pursuing something you already enjoy, such as you just did with golfing. It ensures you have at least one thing in common. (PS- I also delicately pre-screen for political affiliation. This is new since 2016!)
Volunteer somewhere you care about. It doesn’t matter what it is- if you care about what you are doing, you’ll meet others with your shared passion, putting you well along the road of making a connection.
And time. It takes time for an initial connection to become a frienship, at least one year in my experience. So while we felt somewhat alone our first year here, we’re now well into year two with many of our year one connections, and it feels really nice.
Gosh, I kind of went on there- sorry about that!
These are great tips, Tamara. Thank you so much for taking the time to share them with us.
I’m not a joiner of anything really. I used to volunteer a lot, meals on wheels, library, book club. Now I’m quite content to be mostly solitaire except family. I’ve never had a lot of friends even in college. one or two here and there. I used to be concerned about it, until I came to embrace my introvert nature and now am quite pleased that I do. I actually shudder at doing things in a group. Not my style.
For me, it’s taken 66 years to be comfortable in my own skin and not feel pressure to be ‘social’ or have’ friends’. I have a printed sign on my gate” NO VISITORS”. of course, part of that was Barclay can’t be around people. But it fits.
Hey, btw, thanks for the link I do love reading the NYtimes.
I’m kind of in the same boat. Maybe I should just embrace it as you did. Although it is nice to have at least a couple of people you can talk to other than your partner.
Very true!!! That’s why there are blogs and texts these days:)