The Friend Manual: How to make friends when you're bad at it

All my blog posts…

  • Right-sized loneliness is…good?

    This is my last post on loneliness for a while, but I wanted to close out the topic with some context for myself. I’ll be moving on to other topics! Before I started writing these last few posts, I hadn’t given much thought to loneliness itself. I have felt lonely on an off throughout my Read more

  • The opposite of lonely is not-lonely

    I find it really helpful to think of complicated problems (such as loneliness) in terms of simple propositional logic. So, I’ll walk you through why the opposite of lonely is actually not-lonely at a very high level. Disclaimer, I am not a math person, so this post may be a bit dodgy. But if you Read more

  • Radar graphs to understand loneliness and discontent – part 2

    This is a continuation from part 1. I’ve broken out this section to talk separately about when I compare myself to different socialization models, and why that can induce false loneliness. Each of the “fights” below indicate logical fallacies that have led me to outsized loneliness and discontent. Me vs. the “Max” In this fight, Read more

  • 001 – How to make friends when you’re bad at it – Rob might be too nice?

    I recorded a podcast! My first! And now it’s here. I’ve invited my friend Rob to talk about friends, curmudgeons, how people who leave events early are heroes, and knockabout friends. Stick around as we stumble upon some surprisingly successful metaphors. Questions include: This is something I am doing on a dare to myself. So, Read more

  • Radar graphs to understand loneliness and discontent – part 1

    A quick note on how this is related to friendship. I’ve been thinking of loneliness and discontent as triggers that induce people to contact existing friends and to try new strategies to make friends. The quality of loneliness/discontent and the intensity of the feeling can undermine these efforts if not understood/managed. * * * * Read more

  • Body movement during social activities

    Yay! Another quadrants post. For fun, I have set up horizontal and vertical axes to reason out how activities may cause stress in the body by either requiring or inhibiting bodily movement. Why explore this? People who struggle with movement inhibition, may experience more stress at events that have a large number of social rules Read more