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[kyrandil]

One of the reasons I didn't move with K was because I believe I need to get better at managing my own social life. With K around, I'd just spend all my time with them. Between not having a daytime engagement yet (so anti-valuing my weeknights alone) and not being willing to invite myself into people's houses, I've been kind of failing. So how do

Comments

[ext_72787]

Where do you want to end up? Do you want an activity-based group which meets on a regular basis where you'd be welcome if you went but not obligated? Do you want more invitations to parties and ad-hoc events? Do you want to establish relationships with a half dozen or so individual people or couples whom you would then feel more comfortable contacting when you want company? Do you want to meet people to date?

Group activities seem to span a spectrum. On one end, you have an activity which inherently requires (or at least prefers) groups of people in order for the activity to work; the people get together to facilitate engaging in the activity. On the other end you have parties, where the whole objective is to be social. In the middle you have things like game playing and going to movies.

Many engineering and artistic pursuits tend to be solitary by nature, but you can find an opportunity to use some of the same skills in a group context to make larger interactive art installations, and when I was a MIT, a lot of hacks were hard up for EEs. When you're working on something *with* someone and you have a shared objective which cannot be accomplished without some actual effort, I think you get a deeper sense of their personality than if you're just there for entertainment, for better or for worse.

I have mixed experiences at parties. Occasionally they're horrible and awkward and I seem to have nothing in common with the other people there. Occasionally I meet someone with whom I get along particularly well and make an effort to see again. Mostly they fall in the middle; we laugh, tell jokes, and make irreverant comments; it is amusing but basically forgettable, and little changes as a consequence of my having gone.

Parties with a crowd that mostly already know each other seem to play up the social standing of the attendees; at times I've been one of the "cool" people, and at other times I definitely haven't. I could only guess at the reasons.

If you want to take the initiative to invite people to things, but do not want to deal with feeding or hosting them, remember that you can invite them to accompany you to an outside venue, such as a restaurant.

These days I rarely spend time in organized groups at all; when I haven't had enough time with other people, I think of somebody I know and haven't seen in awhile, and ask them if they want to have dinner sometime soon. Usually they do. If not, I ask somebody else. It works pretty well for me.