I wonder how much of the challenge of making friends as an adult varies by the city you live in...
I moved to NYC last year from Rochester, NY and have found that people in NYC are so "busy" all the time that it's much more difficult to make new friends (the recent NY Times article on HN called "The Busy Trap" summed that up perfectly). People in NYC also seem to treat new connections from the perspective of "what can you do to help me advance somehow."
In Rochester, people seem to live more balanced lives (for example, they generally leave work right at 5) and therefore have time to make new connections. They're also less on guard about people, which could have a lot to do with the size of city compared to NYC.
Granted, this is just my observation of the differences between one small/mid size city and a very large one, but anyone else notice this as well?
I completely agree. A lot of this is part of living in NYC as opposed to somewhere else. I lived in LA for 7 years and did not experience the same aversion to making new good friends there. I think there are some missing components to this regarding location and local culture that the author didn't seem to be aware of
I moved to NYC last year from Rochester, NY and have found that people in NYC are so "busy" all the time that it's much more difficult to make new friends (the recent NY Times article on HN called "The Busy Trap" summed that up perfectly). People in NYC also seem to treat new connections from the perspective of "what can you do to help me advance somehow."
In Rochester, people seem to live more balanced lives (for example, they generally leave work right at 5) and therefore have time to make new connections. They're also less on guard about people, which could have a lot to do with the size of city compared to NYC.
Granted, this is just my observation of the differences between one small/mid size city and a very large one, but anyone else notice this as well?