weekend recaps to come!

I’m realizing that one thing I have not shared a ton about are my weekends. I wanted to focus this blog more on my professional and personal change during this transition rather than my Saturday nights but social adjustment is just as, if not more, important than anything else to the success of a move.

The actual things I do are easy to talk about (e.g., I went to dinner Friday with this group of people I met through so-and-so) but difficult to extract the ways that I’ve been able to successfully make friends. I think I am naturally good at meeting people which I take for granted, I know it can be a huge challenge for people in a situation like mine. 

For me the reason why I think I’ve been successful at this in Atlanta as well as other cities and situations (e.g., when I transferred to UVA as an out of state student and literally began making strong friendships my first night) is partly because I’ve been open to any and everything like I’ve written about before. But also since I really push myself to really connect with and get to know people. You have to actually be interested in hearing about the point of view or position in life or understand what makes a person tick. This is something that I’ve always naturally done, I actually don’t feel comfortable around people nor do I consider myself close with a person unless this I know them on a deeper level. 

Just a hypothesis based on only a few data points from observations of friends but I think that one of the reasons why some people find it challenging to make new friends in new cities is that they are not trying to get to know new people on this really true, almost raw level. 

It’s a balance because of course you don’t want to come across as too intense or insincere but I think this is the best way to really forge strong friendships which is key to being happy and settled in a new place.

With that, I’ll start to do a better job of sharing my weekends and maybe ways that I’ve gotten to know people well in just a few weeks. First weekend recap to come tomorrow or Monday!