Remember me
I’m so happy to be doing another Find-a-Find newsletter. If you’ve been here since the first one in 2023, you’ll know this is my fourth. I decided to make it an annual tradition because our social circumstances and appetites are always changing and renewing. Maybe you moved, maybe you changed, maybe you’re just in the mood to meet new or different people. Last year’s newsletter received nearly 2,500 comments of people connecting and organizing local hangouts. Now we get a fresh start. You’ll find some guidelines for navigating this comment section at the end of this newsletter—please don’t skip!
Babies Who Read, a Seattle-based book club that was established in these comments. You can read more about them here! (Photo via Corina)Before we get to best practices, I’m handing it over to my friend and editor Mallory Rice to commemorate this tradition with her own update. As you’ll recall, she moved from New York to Montana around the time we first sent one of these and has been documenting the impact on her social life for the series.
A couple of weeks ago, a reader submitted a question for Haley’s advice column, which she kindly forwarded to me: The letter-writer had been putting real effort into making new friends, but as soon as they found some traction, they were faced with new anxieties: How close did they want to get to these people? How much effort was “too much”? Should they introduce the friends to each other? And if so, when? Was it too soon for these questions? How could they, in their words, “calm the fuck down” about all of it?
These are the waters I’ve been swimming in for the past few years, having moved from the densely populated place where I spent all of my adult life to a cabin next to a river in Montana where humans are outnumbered by cattle two to one. I wrote about my personal “friend recession” for Maybe Baby’s Find-a-Friend posts in 2023 and 2024 (and passed the mic to subscribers in 2025). It’s funny how the process of essentially re-starting from zero seems so much tidier in hindsight. I bet the friend purgatory that the letter-writer described in their note, a situation I also know intimately — when you’ve finally got something to work with but don’t have a clue where it’s going — will one day feel simpler, even predestined, to them, too.
I think I might be exiting the phase the letter-writer described, because in starting to write about this again, I realized I had in fact calmed the fuck down about it, although I can’t recall exactly when. Feeling settled tends to sneak up like that. At some point in the past year or two, my older friendships back in New York found a natural rhythm that can accommodate the fact that I’m only around in short bursts now. My friendships in Montana have contracted and expanded and more recently seem to be coalescing into something tinged with true comfort and familiarity.
Still, there have been little shockwaves: Two women I became close to since moving out West — my best friend’s 91-year-old grandmother Bonnie and her best friend Phyllis, two people I would have been unlikely to befriend had I not embraced friendship-zero — died this year (within months of each other, as was their stated preference). I was not prepared for the revelation that should have been obvious, which is that making new friends who are in their late eighties means, necessarily, that you will have less time with them. Right, of course. I remember driving home from Wyoming after saying goodbye to them and feeling both a gutting loneliness and overwhelming gratitude for having caught them at the tail end.
Only a few months later, I also lapped up the distinct pleasure of touring a few of my Montana friends around New York. While crossing Delancey with one of them on a silky spring afternoon, chatting about ghosts or ex-boyfriends or whatever it was, I was struck by a disorienting, out-of-body sensation brought on by the collision of these two worlds of mine — the sound of her voice and the sight of a Lower East Side sidewalk. It was not unlike waking up somewhere and briefly forgetting where it was you’d fallen asleep the night before. In a good way. As time passes, I think these boundaries of ‘old friend’ and ‘new friend,’ and where I expect to find them, will continue to soften.
Even though at times it felt like hell, or just a slog, I’m happy I’ve put in the effort to make new friends over these last few strange years. I’ve met an uncountable number of interesting people I now treasure because of it, some specifically through this newsletter, which, I must say, turns up people of an incredibly high quality, whether it be for a quick coffee or a full-fledged friendship that includes, yes, recovering my stolen car. (I will never, ever get over that. Thank you, Lilly.) I’m glad this is my attitude, because I have plans to spend more time in Missoula in the near future, an awkward three-ish hours from where I live now, and will be in the market for dinner companions yet again. Missoulians: Please hit me up below or call me on my landline.
Whether it’s your first time commenting or you’re back for another round — maybe you’d like to take a swing yourself?
Me again. As always, shout out where you live and what you’re looking for! If you’re part of a large group from a former find-a-friend newsletter and are open to new members, feel free to share the info (say, a WhatsApp group, Discord server, or email thread). You can also start fresh if an old group’s gone a bit dormant (totally understandable with groups of this size). And if you’d prefer something more intimate, you’re welcome to share more about yourself and even include contact info or links, in order to connect with just a few people. Up to you! Just do a quick search to see if your city’s already been mentioned before you add yours. It’s nice when specific locations are kept to one thread.
If you need a little courage, read last year’s letter, full of testimonies from friends who met through this very comment section.
Love to everyone!
Haley