Friendship after The Great Pause

Musings on friendship, community, and fall delights

It is solidly fall here in Berkeley, despite Northern California not being a place known for its seasonal changes. There’s no intense display of fall colors, or blankets of fallen leaves to be raked. But all the pumpkin stuff (including the parking lot pumpkin patch) is out at Trader Joe’s, SF Fleet Week is here, and inflatable ghosts and full-size skeletons are popping up in the neighborhood.

Even more local to my life, the female gingko tree in the backyard is dropping stinky fruit daily, Wednesday night ultimate frisbee pickup games abruptly ended due to lack of daylight, and I’m craving soupy nourishing comfort foods. College football season is also in full swing (people should really come with a warning if they’re really into college football), and my desire to make things out of yarn has come back, as it does around this time of year if I have time to make things.

Finding friends and community

Lately, I’ve also been leaning more into the idea of community. One of the stories I have about myself is that as an introvert who mostly avoids social events, I don’t have a lot of friends, and I don’t really belong to any communities. Not so much in a, I desperately want a sense of belonging but don’t have it, but that I’ve always found myself having 1:1 friendships with people from a bunch of different communities. The idea of being in a community to be in a community never appealed to me that much.

But as I looked around at the many friendly faces at our housewarming last weekend, it dawned on me that even as someone who thinks of myself as not-that-social, I have really gathered a wonderful community. From people I’ve met through Lead Time Chats, twitter friends who became IRL friends, high school ultimate frisbee friends, old neighbors, new neighbors, kids’ friends and their parents who are also now good friends, friends I made through coach training…the last few years have somehow brought a lot of friends and local community into my life.

Introversion and friendships

One friend commented that she was impressed with how many people she met at our housewarming were new friends — and I realized that perhaps the pandemic was actually conducive to how I make friends as an introvert. I actually met a lot of new friends online after interviewing them for Lead Time Chats over Zoom from the comfort of my own home. I also had a lot more phone calls and walks to catch up with people, and had many a long text conversation.

As an introvert, friendship can be complicated. Part of me wants to hang out with all the people, and I recognize the efficiency of hanging out with lots of people all at once (what you might call…a party?). But I really gravitate towards more 1:1 and smaller group friendships. I find them more meaningful and also more energizing than draining.

Not only am I emerging from two years of relative isolation in a pandemic, but also really almost a decade of raising young children, where socializing was even more challenging for me than normal. I am always a little impressed and intimidated when I meet parents at school who seem to know everyone — because I’m the mom scurrying away before anyone tries to make small talk with me.

Appreciation of mundane rituals

I’ve been reading 40,000 weeks (edit: thanks to Mark who pointed out this is actually 4,000 weeks…I vastly overestimated the human lifespan), which was recommended to me by several people after some of my recent post about being-doing balance. Honestly, I find it a bit of a slog to get through — I’m unused to reading books like it these days, light on personal stories and very heavy on quotes from ancient philosophers. But, the main points it makes seem solid, and I recommend giving it a try.

He talks about the rituals that make life in community meaningful. At one extreme, digital nomads with the freedom to travel the world solo may find that their routines don’t sync up with anyone else’s, so they don’t make long-lasting friendships facilitated by overlapping life structures. It made me appreciate some of the mundane aspects of life and how they play into friendships — seeing the same neighbor sweeping his sidewalk everyday during my lunchtime walk, slowly getting to know certain school parents over a few years and the close friendships that now exist, going out to a pickup game after a two years hiatus and being greeted enthusiastically by familiar faces.

Experimenting with friendships

In a way, shared custody complicates things. On the weekends with kids, we tend to make plans with a certain group of friends, and on the no-kid weekends, we may hang out with kid-free friends (who we assume don’t want to hang out with kids), or friends with much older or younger kids. But I imagine a lot of that is in our own heads, and a lot of those constraints are starting to loosen — it turns out friends with no kids may really enjoy playing board games or Mario Kart with a 6 and 9 year-old.

Friendships have also become so formal. The finding of a good date (sometimes over a month out…), a restaurant or activity, the calendaring, prepping food for hosting…it can be tiring. But it makes sense when trying to keep in touch with friends who live across the Bay, rather than just down the street. But I really enjoy the connections I had recently, like when I made Japanese curry pot pies with leftover curry and frozen puff pastry. I texted a friend, left a pot pie on the porch, and he picked it up and enjoyed it for lunch. Or a recent Costco run with a friend who was considering getting a membership, but wanted to do a trial run to see what was worth buying in bulk.

I’m hoping that this fall and winter bring more cozy low-key come-by-we’re-around hangouts, catching up over errands, and maybe even cooking things together?

As people start to socialize more after “The Great Pause,” how are you finding ways to find new friends, re-connect with old friends, and build community?

Lead Time Chats with Nadia 😍

Lead Time Chats are fun when I hit it off with new people, but also super fun when I get to interview friends like Nadia. Nadia and I went through coach training together years ago, and it’s been an honor to witness her path in coaching and leadership development. How she always show up unapologetically herself and what she stands for, the amazing work she does for women of color, and especially how unafraid she is to be front and center on Instagram. I’m proud to call her a friend (also HAPPY BIRTHDAY), and so glad we found the time to record this Lead Time Chat about managing up.

Things I’ve been enjoying

• Failure Club - another community I joined recently is Mothership Hackermoms, a community of moms with creative pursuits. Part of the programming is regular weekly group meetings called Failure Club. I’ve enjoyed hearing what other people are working on, which inspires me to do things like savor small things in my life more, or get out of the house regularly, or take a big leap in writing projects. Check it out if you’re interested in a support group of moms encouraging each other and celebrating failures, successes, and being enough.

• Being less precious with this newsletter - I try not to look at the number of subscribers, or how many people read it, or how many people unsubscribed, and make up correlations of whether it was because the post was more personal and less eng-leadershipy. It is hard. But I try nonetheless to keep it as a space to write about what’s on my mind, even if it’s not about work. And giving myself permission to publish it, even if it’s not in a super polished, here are the 3 insights/lessons state. Hopefully there is still something for you or something that makes you think about your own life. And if not, as always, feel free to unsubscribe.

Some photos from recent life adventures: Japanese curry pot pie (so easy and delicious!), seasonally appropriate crochet pumpkin stuffy, a daily sweeping of gingko fruit, DIY handroll bar at our housewarming, and one of many delicious bowls made with handroll bar leftovers.