How is it that I have lived in my lovely city for three years yet I haven't made any close friends in my local area?
In episode 059 of The Cafe Grit Podcast, I explore this dilemma of mine and reveal how I am working to overcome it.
I have lots of friends outside of my current home base. So how did I meet THEM?
✅ Work! One advantage of getting back to the office (for those who want to) is meeting a lot of people.
✅ School! Friends from college, friends from high school - there are always a few who are your people.
✅ Through other friends! I have a few close friends that I met through others.
✅ Family! Goes without saying...siblings, cousins, bonus aunts, so many awesome friends.
But alas, my current situation is not conducive to meeting people under the above circumstances.
↳ I have been a remote worker for over 7 years.
↳ I am no longer in school.
↳ My friends' friends are not local.
↳ My family members are spread across the country.
Never fear! I am learning to think outside of the box on the friend front!
How did you meet your closest friends?
Check out Cafe Grit if you've got the hankering for purpose, a taste for fulfillment, and you're tired of living the rat race.
How is it that I have lived in my lovely city for three years yet I haven't made any close friends in my local area?
In episode 059 of The Cafe Grit Podcast, I explore this dilemma of mine and reveal how I am working to overcome it.
I have lots of friends outside of my current home base. So how did I meet THEM?
✅ Work! One advantage of getting back to the office (for those who want to) is meeting a lot of people.
✅ School! Friends from college, friends from high school - there are always a few who are your people.
✅ Through other friends! I have a few close friends that I met through others.
✅ Family! Goes without saying...siblings, cousins, bonus aunts, so many awesome friends.
But alas, my current situation is not conducive to meeting people under the above circumstances.
↳ I have been a remote worker for over 7 years.
↳ I am no longer in school.
↳ My friends' friends are not local.
↳ My family members are spread across the country.
Never fear! I am learning to think outside of the box on the friend front!
How did you meet your closest friends?
Check out Cafe Grit if you've got the hankering for purpose, a taste for fulfillment, and you're tired of living the rat race.
Welcome to cafe grit. My name is Beth Ann Campbell and I am the author of where the hell is my bacon, a book about a corporate team that triumphed over shitty leadership with the help of fried pork. I opened Cafe grid is a place where you can join me in figuring out how to channel your grid and find your voice in the world, whatever that means for you. This is the place to go when you got that hankering for purpose, a taste for fulfillment, and you're tired of living the rat race. Thanks for stopping in Cafe grit is now open for service. Hey, everybody, welcome to cafe grit. I'm your host, Beth in Campbell. Cafe grit is where the Moxie is fresh, the passion cold brewed, and everything is served with a heaping side of mojo. I've got so much Mojo these days, well, who I just I kind of just feel good. I feel good. Dan in in, in in in it. Anyway, speaking of cold brewed, if you're going to cold brew coffee, it's actually pretty good. It's kind of mild, it's, I find it to be a pain in the ass to do myself, but you can buy it, you know, cold brew coffee. And it's some it's it's kind of smooth, kind of nice. I get my coffee from this awesome place. In Floyd, Virginia, it's south of Roanoke, and they do online orders. So if you're somebody who's interested, you know, maybe think about it. It's called Red Rooster coffee. And I found them because they're in the local stores, I used to live in Roanoke, which is not far from Floyd. And they had him in the stores, they I can find it actually out here in central Virginia as well. But when I lived in Roanoke, I discovered them and realized how great they were. And so I when I moved away, so now I order their coffee. And it's different every time I order. So I probably do three or four orders a year. It's not cheap. But it is so worth if you're a coffee person, the smell, when you open a bag of coffee that has been ground two days ago, and comes from you know, all these great sources that they have. It's just wholly different than when you go to your local grocery store and buy your you know, even even this is some of the stuff that I think is a little bit better like Starbucks, it's just, it's just not quite the same. So I'm definitely enjoying and really kind of developing a little bit of a palette for before it was just like random, whatever they had. I like a light or light medium roast. And so I but now I'm developing a little bit of palette, I'm actually getting favorites. And so that which is going to be hard, because if they don't have that available on any given order, then it's going to be a little tough. But anyway, speaking of coffee, so I'm talking today about something that I've been involved with, or started doing just in the last couple of weeks. So I and it involves coughing by the way, that's why it's, I started with coffee because we're going to go back to coffee. So I live here in central Virginia here with my awesome husband, Sean and our dog, Moxie, the chrome cannon ball. And we've been here for just about three years. We moved here from Roanoke. Before that it was Michigan, we kind of went back and forth Michigan, to Virginia, but ended up in Roanoke and then my husband got a job a little bit more north in the state. So we moved and we were both tired of moving in renting. So we said look, Central Virginia, it's close to Harrisonburg, which is a fairly large size of a city, Charlottesville with UVA. And you know, all the amenities not too too far from the Capitol, it's we're an hour a little over an hour to to Richmond, although I'm not a big fan of Richmond stuff, I will just say that. But we've been here for three years, we moved in the middle of the pandemic. And I've also been for the last seven years 100% remote worker. So I have struggled a little bit, making friends. Not that I've put out a huge amount of effort, but I don't engage in the kinds of activities that some people do where you are just naturally around people where you would find someone that you click with. And it's important to find that that that clip, right because not all personalities or backgrounds are a good fit for everybody. So I don't go to church because I'm not religious or I don't go to church or synagogue or a mosque or anything like that. So I don't I don't I'm not around a lot of people in the religious sense. I don't have young children, so I'm not in the school system. A lot of times younger folks or folks that have kids where they're doing a lot of activities and they're involved in their school system. They're going to meet people that way. I don't I don't work in an office that was I've met a lot of friends. Some of my closest friends are people that I've met in the workplace. But I no longer work in a workplace. So all of my co workers are scattered around the country. And while I do consider many of them friends, and we do hook up, it's not like a daily thing where we edit, I talk on the phone daily to one of my closest friends. But it's not that we're, you know, having coffee once a week or anything like that. So I've struggled a bit with making close friends locally. And now that I'm out of the corporate shackles, the weight has been lifted. I'm doing things that I love, I'm happy. There's no space in my brain to start thinking about, hey, I really miss that I really miss that in person. companionship, especially with women, gay men, too. But I started thinking about how can I make this happen, right. So in the past, in other areas, when I've been new to an area, I've looked out on places like meetup now, I think Facebook groups are getting more popular than meetup.com. But meetup.com for a while, and in still is a pretty decent place to find groups. And in the past, and other places, I've I've found groups for women of a certain age, who gather periodically. And out of that group, I did make a friend when I was in Roanoke, I have a friend who I met in that capacity. So I thought, well, maybe that's something to look for. Let's go out and see if there's anything on meetup, any Facebook groups, and I couldn't find any, any in particular for what I was looking for, which is women around my same age, so 40s 50s 60s 70s, whatever, who are going through a time of their life, because I think there are a lot of commonalities when women go through their middle years and go through perimenopause and menopause and post menopause. And it's certainly you know, a mentally, right just things that you can support each other and share about but also good conversationalist, smart women, women who are, you know, confident and just like to go out and are okay with not having the husband there every single time. And I really didn't find anything, there's really wasn't anything on meetup, there are a lot of groups out there for specific activities. And that's another great way to meet people. But one of the problems I find with the online groups is they get so large that you just sort of become a number, or they just don't keep up on their activities. So So I went out, I decided I was going to go out and see maybe if there's, there's a group out there that I'm just not aware of. So I decided I was going to go on our local city Facebook group. So it's kind of like, if you're familiar with the next door app, which if you are, I'm I, my condolences. I just find that Netflix or Netflix. I love Netflix, I find next door to be one of the most horrible social media platforms out there. Because anybody who uses next door knows it's it's people that don't know how to use the internet. It's people that have a lot of rage and just want to shame other people. There's people that don't that use next door as their their police as their community, Karen and Kevin judgmental area. It's just horrible. Um, but you can get some good recommendations for like, repair people and stuff. So I do go out there occasionally. We have a Facebook equivalent to that that's a little less judgy. So I'm not a it's a public group. And I'm not a member. I've been a member but sometimes it gets a little yucky. So I don't I don't I'm not a member but I can look at stuff and I can post there. So I went out to our city group and I composed a post basically asking it Are there any groups out there for badass women in there? I call that our glory years, our Middle Ages that are going through things looking for support and whatever it is work life, just looking for some camaraderie and maybe to have coffee once in a while. If not, maybe we should maybe we need one. And as I was writing this, there was a little bit of my inner voice my inner voice her name is Liz she's kind of a fucking bitch sometimes, but I know she's just being there to protect me. But Liz kind of came in and was making me feel like, why am I doing this? Beth, you're going to put this post out there and everyone's gonna think you're this desperate, middle aged woman who who can't find friends. But you know what? Part of the the glory of being in your glory years you don't give a fuck anymore. So I did a little countdown in my head three to one and I just shut my eyes and I pressed, I clicked to post, and then I waited, I was either going to feel like an idiot, or maybe there are people in the area who would be interested in some companionship, maybe there are people that haven't been in the area for very long. People like me that work remotely and don't go to church and don't go places where they meet a ton of people. Within about a half an hour, a couple people had come in and said, great idea. Count me in. Absolutely. And for the rest of the day, there were quite a few people responding saying this is a great idea. I need this, let me be a part of this. So I went out and created a Facebook group and a local group private group, because I knew sometimes we would be talking about things that we don't want out there. And we now have this is less than two weeks later, we now have 15 members of this local group. And a couple days ago, I had my first meeting with one of my group members, I put an event out there just for coffee. I passed this lovely coffee place in Verona, Virginia, called Northridge cafe and coffee or coffee and cafe. It's I've never been there before. And apparently my husband has several times asked if I would ever want to try it and I was very Pooh poohing it. So I apologize to my husband, it was it's actually a really nice place. And I probably wish we would have tried it earlier. But it's a little lunch, a little coffee, brunch, breakfast, brunch, early lunch kind of a place in very great atmosphere I but I'd never been. So I put an event out on our Facebook page, the new Facebook Facebook page for the glory for the badass women of my area in our glory years. And it was kind of short notice. And a lot of people were not able to come because they do have day jobs. But one woman was free. And so I just I showed up I said like I'm gonna be there at nine o'clock. If nobody shows up, that's fine. At least I'll we'll have a nice coffee, I will have been in an in a new environment and found a new place and can assess maybe that's something that my husband and I can go to. And I really wasn't worried about if if nobody showed up. But I was hopeful that somebody would and one woman was free and able to and I'll just call her Kay and I had an amazing conversation with her. She is a super smart has a really rich work history, different sector than I am in but it was just, she she could certainly appreciate and had dealt with a lot of things that I dealt with. And so we talked for two hours over coffee. And it was amazing. It was just so nice and refreshing to be in person again, because other than what I you know, visit other places like when I go home to Michigan and stuff, I have those great personal interactions, but those are few and far between. So there are a lot of other women. Like I said, we've got 15 members right now. So I'm going to arrange some other events, maybe after work stuff and I got some great ideas from this person que who showed up. And I'm feeling like on top of the world because I took a chance. Discomfort is the Herald of opportunity. You've heard me say that before. That is not my line that is from this guy, Jason CYB, who is kind of a mental kind of a coach out there for for folks that are trying to be more healthy, should look him up. He's really awesome. But discomfort is the heralds of opportunity I heard from him and I I can't underscore working through that fear and putting ourselves in uncomfortable positions. In situations as I talked about a few episodes ago about how my mother used to do when I was a kid she would make me take responsibility for if I wanted to start a lesson of some sort or phone acquittal lesson. She wouldn't do it for me, she wouldn't do my dirty work. And so every time I can put myself in a position of discomfort and work through the fear and it works out great because in this case, discomfort truly was the Herald of opportunity because of all these great women that I'm so looking forward to meet and have that companionship and and and I feel good about having moved through that fear. It's just another instance of being able to show that look, the world did not crumble around me and it actually turned out better. So anybody out there who is maybe challenged with making friends or finding friends think outside the box. And you might just have the same kind of luck and good fortune and outcome as I did with this new group. I'm really looking forward to it and and I think I think you can you can figure it out as well. So and if I can be of any help in that, please reach out and let me know I am looking for ways to make a difference in the world. So I am here and I would love to hear from you on LinkedIn. I'm Beth Ann Campbell. I am the been 67 on your meta groups, Facebook threads and Instagram. And I am on YouTube as the been that's two ends in the been it's an it's a rearrangement of Bethann if you must know, but all of my video podcasts are out there on YouTube. So please subscribe, like and give me a comment here or there. I really would love to hear from you. And again, if I can help in any way, please, please reach out. I would love to do this for you because you are a fucking badass. You know that, don't you? Even if you don't have any friends, you're still a badass and don't let anybody tell you otherwise. Take it easy. Hey, everybody, thank you for stopping by Cafe grid, where the Moxie is fresh, the passion cold brewed and everything is served with a heaping side of mojo. For more Cafe grid episodes, please check out Beth Ann campbell.com/cafe grid. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider giving it a rating or review on YouTube Buzzsprout or your favorite streaming platform. I'll be forever grateful and in return, I wish upon you copious amounts of bacon, your favorite hot beverage and of course pi. I'd love to connect and hear about your great experiences as well. Please go to Beth campbell.com For links to all my social media. Cafe grid is a product of Bethan Campbell, LLC. All rights reserved. Thanks again and remember, you are a badass. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Take it easy.