How To Make Friends When You Are No Longer in School

When I was in high school I had a lot of friends and I found it easy to meet new people. When I was in college I spent most of my time with my then boyfriend and so I didn't make a lot of new friends, but I did manage to make a few. Now that I am an adult with a full time job I find it much more difficult to make friends. So I did some research. According to the internet here are the best ways to make friends when you are an adult not attending school.

1) Meet people at work.

This one seems easy! Especially if you are like me and you spend 50-80 hours every week working. The difficulty here is that you may find that the people you work with vary greatly in age and may not have the time to spend with you nor similar interests.

2) Meet people through a hobby (Examples from the internet include conventions, painting classes, hiking clubs, etc)

This one makes sense too. Go do something you like and meet people there! Of course, my hobbies include reading, writing, and working as a teacher(yes I did just list my job as a hobby, look above it takes up enough of my "free time" it should also count as a hobby, right?). These aren't exactly things that are easy to make friends doing.

3) Try the app Meet Up.

This is a very cool concept. You type in your interests and the app tells you about groups that meet up on a regular basis to do activities that you might enjoy. This is great if you live in a city. If you live in a small rural town in Maine (Ahem, this writer) you might find that there are no meetups in your area.

4) Volunteer.

This one also makes sense. You volunteer at the local food shelter and make friends with people who care about the same things that you do. Obviously this works best if you have free time.

5) Take a class.

This is intriguing to me because I like to learn new things. I could see myself taking a photography class or something. However, it costs money. And requires a lot of time and energy. 

6) The internet.

Loads of people meet every day on the internet. I don't know how they do it. But they do. I wish there was an app for people who just wanted to find friends. I tried to download a few. I met a lot of men who wanted to have sex with me. So... apparently we have created hookup apps and dating apps but no friendship apps yet(unless you count meetup, see above).

7) Go to things that you are invited to.

This one is super easy. Wait until someone invites you to something and go have a good time. Of course, you have to get invited first. ... Do you guys get invites to things?