Hello All, and welcome to the next installment of Making my Mark on the world. Today I am going to discuss how I made a friend in the past year.
I discussed in a previous post, Looking for Friends, some of my past social struggles. I also noted that recently I have had some success in making friends. Just saying that is something new for me. In this post, I am going to share a story about how I made a friend moving to DC.
As I’ve mentioned, I enjoy working in a college setting. When I got admitted to my PhD, I was not guaranteed a teaching assistantship. Therefore, I set out to find other on campus opportunities. This ultimately led me to a proctoring position with the testing center. I enjoyed this position, it was relatively low stress and provided a quiet workspace for several hours a week. However, the biggest benefit was ancillary.
After my first shift, I had a chance to meet the proctor that worked after me. To avoid too much difficulty with pronouns, I’ll call her Jane. Jane and I had a really nice conversation about a range of topics, including what we were studying and where we were from. The best part of this conversation was that it felt genuine. I got the impression that she truly wanted to get to know me. This was different from my default internal belief that people do not want to get to know me, and do not find me interesting. I felt really happy after this conversation. In the coming weeks, I found myself hoping that I would get the chance to talk to her after my shifts.
The act of hoping that I would get to talk to Jane after shifts was a passive strategy, and it predictably did not get me very far. However, after a few weeks I started to think more boldly. What if I reached out to Jane and expressed my interest in being friends? There was a lot of doubt for me. I would have to find her email from the work system, would this be creepy? What if she said no? Would it then be uncomfortable and nerve wracking everytime I went to work?
However, after about a month or so I brought the idea of reaching out to Jane to my life coach. We worked on a draft email to send to Jane. I have to give my life coach a lot of credit here, she was instrumental in drafting the message that I sent. I want to share that message because it really resonates with me. The message was:
“Hi Jane!
It's Mark Plato from school, I honestly just thought I'd reach out in case you'd be interested in talking some more. You seem really awesome and it would be fun to have a new friend. :)
If you’re interested, let me know and we can grab a cup of coffee sometime or something. If you’re too busy, no worries I understand completely.
Have a great weekend!
Best,
Mark”
It is a relatively simple message, but it is honest and bold. It is straightforward, yet not aggressive. By that I mean my intentions were clear, but the message did not put pressure on Jane to say yes to the request. It took me a little while to send the message.
Finally, after some additional encouragement from my life coach I mustered up the confidence to hit send. A week or so went by with no response, and self-doubt began to creep in. This doubt proved to be unwarranted though. The next week she replied back and was interested in getting together. From that point Jane gave me her number, and we set up a time to meet at the cafe on campus.
We had a great conversation in this meeting. We spoke for an hour and half about all kinds of things. Our families, pets, and love languages to name a few. It was such a magical feeling. The time flew by. Jane expressed interest in hanging out again.
Since that time, we have also gotten together to explore the city a little bit. For example, I talked to her about nature walks. She really liked this idea, and she shared how she finds trails in the area. Our next get together was a nice walk on a nature trail, filled with more great conversation.
From a timeline perspective, this all happened in October and November of last year. We then also got together before winter break to see a model train display in the city. She even gave me a goodbye hug before break. This all was new for me. I had never really had a friend hug me before. I had assumed that I was not much of one for physical touch, but perhaps it was just because I had never experienced a lot of physical touch in my life before?
Anyhow, this has been such an amazing experience. In fact, Jane is the friend that I am planning on going to the zoo with next month. I really did not think that it would have been possible for one message to lead to an amazing friendship. It was scary. There was a lot of doubt, but I am so happy that I took a chance.
I should also note that friendships require work. While this one message set me up for success, maintaining a friendship requires continually putting yourself out there. I still have feelings of doubt. Sometimes I think, why would she like me just for who I am? My anxiety tends to get higher if she doesn't reply in a certain amount of time. These are all things that I am working on though.
I wanted to share this anecdote because it is not always easy to make friends, especially once you get past a certain age. In this case, things went well. It could have been the case that Jane never replied to the email. That would not have been a failure. The outcome would have been similar to never having reached out in the first place, but still would have given me an opportunity to develop a meaningful relationship.
All of this is to say, sometimes you have to put yourself out there. It is cliche. It is also true. Furthermore, it is difficult. It is something that I have struggled with throughout my life. I am still working to get better at it. In the future, I would like to have the confidence to communicate more like this in-person. I have grown in digital communication, but in-person I tend to struggle even more with being shy.
As always, thank you for reading. I also wanted to provide a shout out to the Sample. The Sample is a newsletter service that will forward you other newsletters based on your interests. You can sign up here. I get an email from them every morning, and have signed up to several newsletters as a result. It is a great way to get more information and to support writers. Thank you again for reading, and I wish you all the best. If you liked this post, please consider subscribing and sharing. I will be writing more posts about personal wellness, growth, and mental health.
Favorite post so far!!!! Love how much you shared about your thought process and the honesty in what came up for you. Lots of people could learn from this!