RE: social anxiety, I need to attend more meetup events, regardless of the consequences, make more friends, be more rooted

Now that one is at the end of the much feared and vaunted project to get decent numbers in for 2023 in this blog, we must make plans for the upcoming year. And one of my...not really resolutions, more like plan and noncommittal decision is to be more social. Make more friends, be out and about more. End my hermetic existence while still maintaining a high degree of independence and ability to do great things. On my walks I see these apartments and on weekends these young people have friends coming over for dinner or tv and it's a large group always. Which gets me wondering, hey they're probably in Seattle just like me, how come they've got so many friends and I so few, where did I do wrong and how can I get it right?

The issue is that one of social anxiety, it has been identified...A fear of meeting new people, embarrassing oneself and being shamed for disappointing them isn't going to be good for somebody who wants to make friends. So this is a low-risk activity to push my boundaries and get something I want: more social interactions.

To do that, I need to attend more meetup events, go to bars and coffee shops more often because that's where people meet people, and be unafraid about the risk of random-person friendships and relationships. The world is a wild place, risky and scary and there are mean awful annoying irritating people out there. To be able to live with them, and tolerate them, maybe even have them become your friends builds resilience for the future. That is what I must do.

It's not just for myself either. It's for my connections to the city. Despite having moved here almost three years ago, my roots have not yet been spread deep, they're just surface, no substance. That must change. And for that, meetup and friendsmaking is of the highest priority.

I'll start with tech events and writing events, make friends with even nerdy techie guys because one must start from somewhere even if it's less than ideal, and see where we get. Fingers crossed.