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

All my blog posts…

  • AI wish you hadn’t done that

    I’ll be honest, part of the reason I haven’t been posting is because of the explosion of generative AI discourse. When the writing you create goes from “maybe” being scraped, digested and churned badly into free, unattributed content to “guaranteed”, the futility monster moves in and sets up house. It’s made me think less of Read more

  • Consent in the Ask

    I love to talk about consent in the world of friendship. Consent is often relegated to the spheres of romantic/sexual relationships and work relationships. But it belongs in friendship too! Here are some basic rules of consent: Consent and Social Risk An element of social risk is involved in both asking and responding to social Read more

  • Initiation – Types of asks

    Initiation – Types of asks

    I’m going to take a little winding detour to talk about the different types of asks (the first overture said/sent to someone before negotiating the details). Each type of ask means something slightly different. It can be useful to think about what types of asks are best to use in your life.  Now or Never Read more

  • Diagram of an event – Initiation part 2

    This is a continuation of Diagram of an event – Initiation. We’ve discussed what an initiation ask is, now we’re going to discuss the response to the ask. People can either accept or decline the ask, but, as per usual, it’s a little more complicated… I’m going to discuss the following response scenarios: Accept This is Read more

  • Diagram of an event – Initiation

    I’m finally back to the first stage of the diagram of an event…initiation! What is an “Initiation”? Initiation in this context is when one person asks another person to do something and the request details are explicitly accepted by all parties. It sounds so simple, right? Well, there’s nothing that’s simple that I can’t make Read more

  • Toxic Productivity Syndrome

    I’ve been trying to figure out what led to my extreme burnout and I think that this might be part of it. I’m someone who takes on too much stress and holds onto it as a sort of badge of honor. So, here is my take on it using logic math: The basics… If you Read more