I’ve been working on myself after coming out of a toxic long-term relationship that destroyed my social network, and am quite rusty at engaging with people I don’t know. I’m also an introvert by nature, but am capable of overruling that nature and engaging with people when I consciously try. At this point I feel like I just need to boost my experience and restore a level of comfort in engaging with people I don’t know. When I go out (by myself), I tend to go see live music, which is fun but generally not conducive to conversation. Ultimately I’d like to restore my rusty social skills for the purposes of interacting with members of the opposite sex, but at this point I just need to work on engaging with people in general. WHat say you, people of Lemmy?
I’d always suggest volunteering - be it wildlife conservation or staffing a charity shop or restoring vintage trains in a museum or whatever. Pick something that you have a little interest in and you will already have that in common with the other volunteers and, as a volunteer, you have no commitments and can walk away at any point.
My therapist recommended I try to do some volunteer work when I brought up not having anyone in person (other than him and family) to talk to about things really depressed me. Told me about a site called justserve which has quite a few community volunteering projects on it I’m willing to try out.
I met multiple long term romantic partners from this exact thing.
Plus even if you don’t find someone, any time invested in saving animals is absolutely positive karma you can feel good about, even if it was just cleaning cages.
It might would. could be a disaster.
plenty of volunteer communities are full of insane gatekeeping types of people.
This is a good idea, thanks!