Hi, I’m new on this site and have 0 friends who use it. I’m looking for anyone who wants to be a friend. I don’t mind gender, girls are preferable though. I don’t mind if you come with baggage, I want to be there for you. So a bit about me;

• I’m 16
• I’m a female
• I’m pansexual
• I prefer people leaning towards their feminine side
• NOT THAT I HAVE ANYTHING AGAINST YOU
• I like buzzfeed unsolved
• I love music, I’m in a small band
• I write and am top of my English classes
• I draw but my pen is still shipping :’(
• I love plants
• I practise modern witchcraft
• I’m a wiccan ^
• I really don’t know what else to write, there’s so much I’ve not mentioned but my brain has stopped.

I just really want a friend on here <3

Is this making friends?

This piece is edition #20 of Shangrilogs. Subscribe to the newsletter and pieces like this will just show up in your inbox.

If we’re ranking mental health salves, enchantment is as close to a natural benzodiazepine that I’ve found. I spent the first five months here talking to trees, sharing giggles with squirrels and apologizing to surprised porcupines like we bumped into each other coming and going from our local coffee haunt. Oop! Sorry, you go! No, no, you go! Ooh, oops, haha! We’re both going! Laughter paired with an embarrassment so mild it feels only like an unexpected warm breeze.

This connectivity kept me company, but the trees are, for the most part, napping. The squirrels and porcupines are only evidenced by their chaotic drawings across the snow fields from one pine well to another. Only a peppering of magpies remain at this elevation, save for the few songbird calls I can hear when I pause the unfathomably loud swishing of my snowpants against themselves. I sing back, but it falls flat against the snow and I am alone again.

It’s been six months since I moved here, and I am lonely.

There’s an inevitability to loneliness in moving. Like exercise brings sore muscles, it’s built in. And in a way, it’s required to become a member of a community. There needs to be a drive, a desperation to break in to a dance very much in progress, to show you are the kind of troupe mate who makes dancing weightless. I have not accrued enough desperation to try this dance, and I am more Darcy than Elizabeth in this regard — crippled by my fears and not yet sufficiently encouraged by my hopes to give in.

This has been a persistent issue for me. Multiple people at multiple company Christmas parties have said verbatim, “You’re way more fun than I thought you were,” like my whole personality has resting bitch face. The reality is much, much lamer: I’m scared. Like a street cat, it’s not that I’m incapable of being friendly, it’s more that I don’t trust other people to be friendly back, which often leaves me waiting for them to be friendly first, repeatedly, before I engage. But also, I still look like this:

A person who gets me some 4,600 miles away joked I should put an ad in the classifieds requesting friends, reminding me of the once heavily advertised but now suspiciously quiet Bumble BFF. The reviews of Bumble BFF are bad because making friends is awkward. When romance is involved, there’s always the good ole fall-back of “you’re not my person,” but with friends? It’s so much more brutal to be like, “you’re not one of the thousands of people I’ve connected with in all sorts of situations and places over the course of my whole life, and honestly, I have more deeply enjoyed conversations I was forced into with strangers on planes than I did doing something we agreed upon in advance with you.” I mean fuck.

I wish making friends was as easy as a Classified ad because I like thinking about what my “friend profile” would say. Sometimes I actually fantasize about what a dating profile would say now that I know myself so much better. I think I’ve narrowed my entire personality to this:

I take the stairs at the airport, I use my turn signal when no one’s there, and I always return my grocery cart.

To me this conveys I am annoying, I am paranoid, and I think convenience is a pretty word for the laziness that continues to disintegrate the community values so many of us are desperately craving. But also that I am annoying.

You don’t need classifieds here, though. You just need to go outside. In a city, if you don’t get someone’s number the first time you meet, you are relying either on FBI-level stalking or kismet to connect again. Here, all you have to do is quite literally go outside and you are contractually guaranteed by the Law of Small World Likelihood to run into that person again. In fact, it’s harder to not see someone than to see them. Which means if you’re having a bad day, you better cheer the fuck up or the next time they see you they’re gonna be like, “there’s the girl with resting bitch personality.”

If you’ve been reading since the beginning, you might recall a girl I encountered on the trail — an encounter that made me feel small and like I was somehow a traitorous snake without ever having met her before. Well, I ran into her again and I report with dishonor that she was incredibly nice. Maybe that day we met she was having a bad day. Maybe (harder to admit) I was the one having a bad day. But in a small town, you need to have grace for the people around you and plead they have the same for you.

I am lonely, but I should be. It’s winter in a cabin in a pandemic in a town of 180 people where I have lived for 6 months, most of which I spent sitting at a desk. And upon close inspection, friendship is probably only a few more months away. Since my avalanche class, I’ve run into three people from the course. Each one remembered me by name. They’re not my friends, but they could be! I ran into a neighbor I’ve been hoping to have dinner with for months, wondering why she hadn’t texted back — can you guess why? It starts with 2020 and ends with learning to make sourdough.

But there is a swirl, and it is pulling me.

Imagine LA or New York or London for the oceans they are, you know, the seas where your aunt says there are plenty of fish. And there are — there are fish fucking everywhere. Shitty fish, loud fish, secretive fish, fish that you’re like “that fish is bad news” while you put a worm on a hook as your friends say, “you’re literally allergic to that fish,” and you say “hm?” as you cast the line. But this is a pond, and somehow that is much scarier. No one notices you in an ocean! You’re just another dumb fish! But here, I’m a scared ass little fish who doesn’t smile and because I work from home and just moved here, I am under a rock, not even going out for food because my partner fish does that, so only a few other fish have even noticed I’m here. And they’re like, “the fuck is with that reclusive new fish?”

Even in the seas of a metropolis, there are those people you don’t technically know, but might be the first person you’d talk to if your subway car was trapped underground. You’d be like, “look we’ve been riding this train together for 3.5 years, and you’ve never done anything weird like huff glue or fondle your balls, so do you want to form an alliance in case shit gets weird?”

Those people still exist in small towns — the ones who share your paths and your routes and your elevators and your favorite Thai place. They’re called everyone. You see everyone over and over here, and you sniff them out because anyone who isn’t everyone is a tourist. That, or they’re also a weird fish hiding under a rock, too yet scared to dance.

We went to the vet the other day to take care of a cat injury. While waiting in the truck, a technician came out with an excited mid-sized black mutt, returning him to his dad. They made small talk and she headed back to the building, but as she opened the front door, she turned back to him.

“Hey, tell your wife that Brandy says hi!” She yelled through her mask, holding the door open with one hand and gesticulating with the other so the mask couldn’t be held responsible for obscuring her from his attention.

This is the siren call of the small town. If you don’t know me yet, someone you know does. There’s an occasional implicit so watch it but usually the only thing implied is I’ll be seeing you at the grocery. Every person comes with clues. Sometimes they’re easy, like:

“Oh you live on Spruce St? Do you know…”

But sometimes they’re small town chaos:

“Excuse me, is your dog’s name Cooper? I ran into a friend on the gondola the other day, and he was telling me his ex-wife Sarah — they’re still friends — was starting a new business over on Fur St with her best friend Liz, and that Liz had this woman helping her with her social who’d just moved to town and that she had this great dog, and he showed me a picture of it, and I think it’s this dog.”

This happens with Cooper and is not a stretch. People know Cooper, notably all the children in this tiny town. When it’s a nice day and Cooper is outside being a dog, I hear children I’ve never even seen before call his name to come play. Cooper has more friends than I do by what I would consider quite a large margin.

But the tides, the swirl, are pulling me from my rock. The Law of Small World Living and Likelihood will tickle the doorknobs of even the most reclusive, and you can’t help but peek out the door to see who’s there. Here are some examples:

• Our neighbor’s little sister played high school soccer with Ben’s cousin.
• That neighbor’s daughter goes to a school in Colorado where Ben’s uncle taught.
• Ben’s closest friend in LA went to a wedding a month back where the best man at the wedding is actually building a house in this town — this town of 60 odd houses.
• One of my best friends in Topanga, her ex-boyfriend (who moved from LA to the midwest) is now dating the butcher here, and they just moved to this tiny town, too. What brought him here? Well friends of his moved to this area four years ago, and he visits them. So do we — they were the ones who introduced us to our realtors. They were acquaintances in LA, but fast friends here. Not to mention the realtors they introduced us to now text about grabbing beers.
• One of my other dear friends from Topanga, living in New Hampshire for the season, struck up a conversation with a friend of hers and our tiny town came up — that friend said, I know someone there! I know one of those 180 people! My friend texted to prompt an introduction, but you know who it was? The postponed-by-Covid dinner friend. I texted her immediately, house-to-house some hundred yards away, and she was already texting with her friend about it.
• Not to mention the fellow LA bike scener who has a place on the other side of town (hi Kevin!) or the gal who also moved to this area in July and was forwarded this newsletter by a friend over the range saying, “this girl needs friends.” (Hi Dévon!)

Somewhat foolishly, Western culture all agreed that the most lifeless time of year was the best time to reinvent ourselves, to expand our horizons even as the actual horizon is only lit for a sad few hours a day. These dark days, built for hibernating and cocoa, they don’t exactly lend themselves well to expansion and growth. Even in sport, we’re cocooned into layers and backpacks and helmets and goggles. Meeting people isn’t easy. It’s never really easy, but it is somehow easier when everyone is in tank tops. But the swirl continues, even if slowly, and the tides are pulling me from my rock as the cold has slowed the dance enough that I can begin to see the steps.

So I’d like to contribute to the swirl. Here is my Be My Friend Profile so the Law of Small World can carry it on the wind. May it tickle every doorknob in a 30 mile range.

I am only softly and gently rad. I love memes. I love taking pictures and word puzzles and self-improvement challenges. I was a cat person until I met the right dog. I’m still a cat person, but that one dog made me love all of them. I am allergic to dandelions and bananas. I love glamour and if you want to dress up, I was hoping you would say so. I will say yes to running errands, going for walks, multi-day hikes, bike rides, skiing, coffee stops, animal shelter visits, physical labor including shoveling, mucking stalls, cleaning the house, stacking firewood, washing cars, raking leaves, and closet cleanouts. I like being useful to people. I mostly read non-fiction, but will always forsake it for ambitious and adventurous sci-fi, fantasy, and adventure. I love finding new music, and I love dancing to music so loud that you can get completely consumed by it and find yourself crying with release. I like friends who hold my hand and hug me even though I flinch at being touched. I am extremely passionate about workers’ rights and am not afraid to get fired for arguing about it. I will talk for hours about how stupid I think the 40-hr-work-week is, but I will help you with your resume and practice interviewing you. If I am alone, I am talking to myself. If I am at a party, I am with the pets who live there. If you ask me to sing, I will say no twice, but hope you ask the third time, because then I will, and I’ll feel so proud and full of joy. I hate vodka and love mezcal. Chicken tenders are still my favorite food. I genuinely think I look cool in my pick-up. If you ask, I will tell you. If you need help, I will come. I am at my worst when I feel trapped, and I am at my best when I feel like the whole world is in front of us.

Oh, and I take the stairs at the airport, I use my turn signal when no one’s there, and I always return my grocery cart.

May the swirl carry it far, and may my courage to dance swirl right along with it.

—-

For more high-altitude cabin adventures in a town of 180 people and 51 dogs, subscribe to the newsletter at Shangrilogs.

Where no one knows your name

How many times is a person meant to make new friends?

When I moved into an apartment in DC with an absolutely iconic girl from Craigslist, I wrote in my journal, “you never know when you’ll meet your next bridesmaid.” Charmingly juvenile, as I was 24 years old. Ironic, as I never had any bridesmaids. And embarrassing, knowing I wrote something that’s surely been embroidered on a bachelorette party t-shirt by now.

My point was: you can meet people you fall in love with anywhere, anytime, assuming your heart (and calendar) are open.

Now my heart and calendar are open and I am one of Elizabeth Bennet’s sad sisters, cloying and desperate for attention while everyone at the ball ignores me.

Meeting people here is unnerving and hapless and eye-clawingly vulnerable. My first new friend told me she was moving away in a few months. Do you invest deeply in hopes of another faraway friendship? Do you just go back to waving as you pass on the street? I like this girl! What an embarrassing thing to have to say to someone! Do you just invite people to every and anything like a lunatic? I can’t even remember to call the people I am forever-and-ever in cahoots with.

I’m also deeply bound by what I’ll call the Movie Trap: say it’s 3pm during not-a-pandemic, and you get the urge to see a movie. You look at the showings, and there’s one you really want to see at 7:15. You think to yourself, “I should make an effort,” and you text a friend.

“Hey, you wanna go see This Cool Movie at 7:15 tonight?”

No one ever says yes. Don’t give me an example of when someone has, because it’s always one of these answers:

• “Oooh, I’m actually seeing it with Kate tomorrow - wanna come?”
• “Can we go to the 9pm showing? Stuck at work.”
• “Yeah but let’s see Movie You’ll Fucking Hate instead.”

Now maybe I’m just lighting flares guiding you to the worst parts of my personality, but this drives me nuts. No, Liz, I don’t want to go tomorrow. I want to go tonight. At 7:15. So I can be in bed by 10. And you’d have to drag my dead body and prop open my eyes to get me to see something like Marriage Story in theaters.

The Movie Trap is a big reason I usually hang out by myself, or I make plans weeks in advance. (Don’t I sound like a blast.) Just the idea of being like, “I like you! Wanna hang out in October?” makes me want to collapse into a puddle of sad adulthood. Which is why on Friday at 4:30pm, when a girl I’d met a week prior asked if I wanted to grab a drink, I just said yes. I put on a pretty dress, did my makeup, put stuff in a purse, and drove the 25 minutes to town.

It was really fun! And how novel to have new contacts in my phone like “Maggie blue house” and “Jess concert friend” — a throwback to the days of “Greg guy on L train” and “Devon ad party.” The very concept of not knowing someone’s last name or even needing it, and a year from now updating their contact info and smiling at your origin story.

But for the most part, no one is in our phones. In terms of phone numbers collected, here is the list:

1. Two friends we knew prior who thank god you guys exist.
2. New friend who is moving away.
3. New friend who is game to drink tequila and ride mountain bikes.
4. Neighbor-not-yet-friend who I really fucking like and am not sure how to cross hang-out threshold with.

​Not to say there aren’t any other prospects or people I’m platonically gaga over, but I don’t have their phone numbers. There are honestly a lot of people like this because when you live in a small town (and you’re from the Midwest) you say “oop, sorry” to every person/object you bump into, and you say “hi :)” to every person you see. These are the rules. If I drive by you and don’t wave, it’s because I was so deep in a daydream I probably shouldn’t have been driving in the first place. This isn’t acceptable, because in our urgency to tattoo our vaccination status on our foreheads so we can make friends, it turns out just driving by someone can be a viable strategy.

A few days ago, a man was driving by our kitchen window and then our driveway, and then he reversed back up to the kitchen window and started waving.

Ben went outside — it was that kind of wave. The man had seen from his car a smokejumper emblem on the back of a truck in our driveway.

“Hey, are you a smokejumper?”

We aren’t. But my dad was, and he was in town visiting, accompanied by the emblem on the back of his truck. The guy said we should drink sometime. Numbers were not exchanged. We’ll call that a node, because it’s not quite a connection. And it’s mainly nodes, waiting to be connected, to have relevance.

But first, no matter who you’re trying to befriend, you have to answer everyone else’s Do I Care Quiz. The quiz is employed by 93% of locals to determine how they feel about you existing within their personal 50-mile radius. The first question is non negotiable:

1) Are you visiting?

Variations on this question include “how long are you in town?” or “what brings y’all to town?” or my least favorite and most insulting, “did you just finish Jeeping?” I know I have blonde hair and say y’all, but how dare you. (Also, to be clear, you can own a Jeep, customize your Jeep, mod out your Jeep, and love your Jeep, but you’re not Jeeping until you drive too fast through a tiny town so you can hurl your Jeep over a mountain pass without ever getting out of it.)

So the answer to “are you visiting” is “no, I live here.” Which brings us to the next question, my favorite for how loaded the gun, kneeling in the grass, scope on, target locked it is.

2) Are you part-time or full-time?

The first time I answered this question, I didn’t realize it was essentially like asking how someone voted in the 2020 election. The judgment was cocked and ready and the palpable relief/joy/or at the very least, tolerance, exuded by answering “full-time” was like when the sun comes out from behind the clouds on a 40 degree day. I was fine, but wow that does feel better.

The third question though does not have a standard hoped-for answer. This is where nodes turn to connections turn to phone numbers.

3) What brings you here?

It seems like the best possible answer would be saying you work in town, and you’re going to begin construction on displaced-worker housing to ensure the people who run this town can actually live in it. We’d have everyone’s phone number. Saying you’re a writer who works remotely and bought a house from a legendary and beloved local who could no longer afford it is really something you keep to yourself.

But in the interest of making friends, I just word vomit my entire history. We might as well find out at the onset if I make your eyes roll back into your skull. Not at all threatening that all it takes is a single social signal misinterpreted to be the absolute death knell of my ability to make friends in a town of some 1400 adults.

In fact, I’ll share one such interaction. I was hiking with Cooper, about 5 miles by foot away from my house. I was on a trail, crossing a sloped meadow, and a group was traversing up the hillside to the trail. I said hi, where y’all coming from. One girl answered and we talked about the trail. She eyed me up and down.

“Did you just move here?”
“I did!”
“I served your family last week,” she said.
“Oh,” that phrasing. “Must have been my in-laws.”
“Heard you bought Jack’s house. Such a bummer when locals like that are forced out.”
“We didn’t even know about his house,” I said. “We were looking at another house and he asked his realtor if he could get us to come see his house. We just loved it, and him!” She had no emotional reaction to this.
“You moved from California?” she asked. (Dangerous question.)
“Yeah, got these sea level lungs, haha,” attempting to disarm with humor was a failure, “but couldn’t be happier to be out of California.”
“It’s not like this all year. Winter’s really hard here, you’re in for a rude awakening.”
“Well California’s the last place I lived, but I’m not from there. I’ve lived in brutal winters. At least Colorado gets sun!” I laugh with cloaked loathing.
“It’s different when you live at altitude,” she said, like no human aside from her had ever been literally anywhere. “Are you trying to go around?” She indicated the path behind her.
“No, y’all go ahead, just gonna wait to give you your space. I’m sure you’re faster than me.”
“K, good luck making it to the lake.“

Maybe she was thirsty. Maybe she was hungover. Maybe she just has vicious delivery, but it felt like every blade of grass was leaning against the wind to listen. She was with four other people and not one of them said a word. I left that interaction not wanting to see another human ever again.

But that interaction, and her intimate knowledge of exactly which house I lived in, made me want to decorate like we lived in a gingerbread house, all candy canes and plum drops, screaming to any passerby that we’re friendly. One of the mayor’s first questions to me was “what are you going to do to the house?” There are rules here about what your house can look like, and I kept emphasizing we bought the house because weloved it, not because we wanted to change everything about it. And now, instead of wanting to decorate the interior, I want to put up shades so we don’t contribute to light pollution, I want to hang a sign by the water spigot saying “grab some if you need” for hikers and mountain bikers, I want to paint a sign for the wild mint by our door that says, “I mint to tell you to take some,” because our neighbors were openly panicked they wouldn’t be able to just grab mint from the cabin’s garden anymore.

Without question, COVID makes things harder. Dinner parties feel like dares. Dropping cookies off at someone’s house feels invasive. Grabbing a drink feels like the ultimate sign of trust. But at least we have nodes who can connect who can think to invite us and who can see that despite having lived in California, we’re not all that bad.

In the meantime, I’ll be painting signs about water and mint, hoping to garner the benefit of the doubt from the so beautifully, earnestly, and waiting-to-see-if-you’re-worth-it doubtful.

Subscribe to the newsletter at tinyletter.com/keltonwrites — high altitude relocation and renovation in a tiny mountain town.

Today I met with a friend whose husband I met at Japanese class. He doesn’t go to class anymore because he got a job and has to work instead of study Japanese. His wife, M, isn’t my best friend, but I see her once in a while to sorta keep in touch. I think she thought it was a little inappropriate for her husband and me to be friends, so she insisted on being in the loop, with the result that I now keep in touch with her and never get to see her husband anymore.

We haven’t seen each other in months because her trip to visit her in-laws happened directly before my trip back to see my parents. Then once I got back, it was a little while before I thought to get back in touch with friends here because we were trying to get ready to send Lolli to a new hoikuen (daycare). But finally, we got to see each other today.

My friendship with her is a bit strange because we don’t really have much to talk about past the superficial stuff. However, we’re both pretty friendly people and our conversations still seem to go smoothly, but sometimes she asks me some random questions about my life that seem misplaced and strange.

Today’s random question was: Do you fight with your husband and what do you fight about?

I feel like questions like this are asked because the person asking wants to talk about some kind of issue in their own lives and it’s a good opening line, so I asked her what kind of things she and her husband fight about. The answer felt like she was answering an interview question, where you are asked a tough question and you admit some kind of minor fault that still somehow makes you seem like a normal person they want to hire. Her answer was that she doesn’t like how long he stands in front of the open refrigerator staring at the contents, and that he doesn’t like it when she speaks too much Japanese at home because he still has trouble understanding everything. All in all, she proclaimed them minor things to argue over and in general they have pretty good communication.

It made me wonder if there was something else she wanted to talk about, but was too embarrassed at the last minute to say it.

Maybe I should invite her out drinking and see if that opens her up a little more.

Q&A’s

If y’all have any questions for me whether it’s faith related or not def ask me! I love giving advice so if y’all are going thru it I’m def here to help!

Daily #2,495! When you take forever to make friends and then had over a year to think about how much you wish you had someone to just come hang out on your couch for a few hours.

deadenbytrash:

About Blog Moderator

Name:Germ/Noah

Age:23

Pronouns: any but she/her

Gender: ⭐️nonbinary, mogai, transmasc⭐️

Orientation: ️‍ abroromantic, abrosexual, polyamorous, queer, nblnb, t4t️‍

Mental/Physical Health: I am autistic, and have OSDD-1B, Paranoia, MaDD, CPTSD, anxiety, depression BPD, Bipolar, I am schizospec, and also suffer from chronic pain and ulcerative colitis. I smoke weed (legal in Canada where I live) to help me cope with my anxiety, paranoia, and hallucinations.

Special Interests: Mark Fishbach, The Backrooms, Stardew Valley, ISOPODS, Studio Ghibli Films, Super Mario Sunshine, Littlest Pet Shop, Planet Earth and Blue Planet (nature documentaries)

Highest Kins + Otherkin: Starlight Glimmer (MLP), Spinel (Steven Universe), Isaac (BOI), demonkin, fallenangelkin, wyvernkin (dragonkin)

You Should Chat With Me If: you’re 18+, like any of these things, just wanna say hi, have any questions about my interests, AND don’t think you need dysphoria to be trans, ACAB, mogai people are valid, ace and aro people are valid and belong in the community, you’re anti-syscourse, and you aren’t actively trying to gatekeep anyone!

DNI TRANSCRIPT UNDER CUT

Keep reading

look my face is in it now!

I can be the friendliest or coldest person you know depending on my mood and the alignment of the stars.

We have some pretty well-fed squirrels in our neighborhood!

tfw you really want to make friends in the studyblr community but you’re too shy and anxious to send messages to people you admire. 

Hello I want to be friends but I’m a scaredy cat if you want to be friends to please send me a message or an ask!

lots of love and take care

Yessi♡

lilragekitten:

Was working on Loki tonight and found out the bottom left corner was all one stitch over. Fml

Hour of stitch ripping later I’m over it for the day.

So instead over last two days I made myself a shiny eevee. Forgot the ear and back piece at home and then I gotta make facial features but LooK HoW CUTe!!!