I partially moved to my new hometown about seven months ago and officially moved here a month and a half ago to take a new and slightly more interesting job and be in the same city as the modern beau, whom I had been dating for four years, mostly long distance.

And in that time I’ve been relearning a hard lesson that I learned the last time I relocated to a new city: it’s easy to find yourself lonely in a new place. Sure, I have the modern beau to keep me company, which he does most of the time. And the modern beau has friends, though most of them will be moving away as soon as they all graduate from law school. I have a few random friends, but no core group.

Being an independent-minded modern gal, I know deep in my heart I need some friends of my own. And since currently I have no home of my own, none of my possessions and no co-workers other than the one who is about 30 years my senior, I could really use some friends that I could possessively call my own.

My dear modern gal friend Noodles and I earlier today were lamenting over how hard it seems to be to make friends/find new social activities when you move to a new place. It was easy in college: everyone was new and looking for new friends. You had a variety of classes and clubs you attended full of bright-eyed, bushy-tailed people looking to make friends.

So where do you go when all that’s over? When I first moved to Nashville a few years ago, I found myself sitting at home alone A LOT. I’m an only child, so I like alone, but not all the time. I would venture out to a mall on a Friday night by myself, hoping it would satisfy the social need. It never did. I started attended a poorly organized church young adult group, but it soon folded for lack of members. I joined a volunteer organization and at least got out of the house more often (and helped people out, bonus), but didn’t really make any friends.

It took me about a year and a half to really find friends that felt like good friends. Most of them I met through connections to the modern beau, because he seems to know tons of people wherever he goes. A few others I picked up randomly along the way. But that year and a half was a really tough and somewhat empty time.

So how do you speed that process up? My guess has always been to join some sort of group, even though I always have an initial fear of attending some sort of group meeting for the first time by myself when other people know each other already. I tried meetup.com in Nashville, but the group I joined was all talk, it never actually met up.

Today, for shits and giggles, I perused the community section at craigslist.com. Behold some of my findings:

– Ufo & Lunar Structure Lecture (ummm, not really an interest of mine)

– Proverbs 31/Titus 2 Women’s Group (even after looking up these passages, I still don’t know what this is, but I’m guessing it’s not for me)
– Meet other sober people and make a new friend in our group! (anti what I’m looking for)
– You Deserve A Girls Night Out !!!!! YES YOU!!! (they were just offering to throw me a sex toy party. I need friends before I do that)
– Come Join our Gangsta Rap Music Dating Group (intriguing, however I’m not on the market)
– Did your ex break your heart? (my ex may have but the current beau is not currently breaking my heart)

– Free beekeeping short course! (well, you get the idea)

After going belly-up on the groups listings, I moseyed on over to the personals section, mostly for my own amusement since they’re usually pretty freakin’ funny. Then I noticed the “strictly platonic” section and thought, well, we’ll see what it’s got under w4w.

I found this:

I moved to Knoxville 6 months ago to be closer to my boyfriend of 3 years, but I am use to having a stong circle of girlfriends. I’m looking for a female/ group of females that enjoy the outdoors, reading, wine, or just talking. I’m very friendly but unfortunatly also very shy.

Ok, that pretty much describes me, minus maybe the very shy part and the improper tense of ‘use’, and she’s only a year younger than me. But I would never respond to a craigslist personal ad. Would I?

So after that laboriously long post, I’m putting multiple questions to my online circle of modern friends:

1. How do you meet new people when you move to a new place?

2. Would you respond to that craigslist ad?

Discuss.