GoKawiilTalking to 35 Strangers at the Gym
Background
A couple months ago, I was the Wizard of Loneliness. I had graduated from college almost two years prior and, while I had luckily found a job, I was unsuccessful in finding friends.
Each night, I would look up “how to make friends after college” and find the same advice given every time: “do your hobby with other people, frequently”.
On paper, the gym seemed like the perfect opportunity to meet people since I would go there nearly every day; however, according to Reddit, there’s a number of people who want to be left alone and can be irritated if you interrupted their workout to talk.
Figure 1: Redditors who don't like to be interrupted at the gym
I am deeply afraid of irritating someone or being in awkward situations. Here’s a list of things that I did as a result of that fear:
Hesitated for a couple minutes before waking up my roommate when the fire alarm went off
Pretended I didn’t know a childhood friend when they said hi because I didn’t know how to act around people I used to know
Ignored people I knew from class instead of saying hi because I didn’t know for sure if they remembered me even though the class had only 10 people in it
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