Making friends and the admin of it all

Life updates!

Sometimes it feels nice to write about the dailiness of things. I’ve been in one of those phases for the past few weeks. Below, a few updates on two major focuses of my life these days: making friends, and dealing with the mountain of admin that comes with moving countries. Enjoy!

Making friends

I consider myself lucky in that it’s always been easy for me to make friends. But I’ve also never been in a situation exactly like this one, where I’ve moved to a city without any sort of social safety net. When I moved to New York after graduating college, I fell in with an existing group of friends and classmates who had also made the move. I also had in-person jobs and internships where it was easy to meet colleagues I may want to befriend. Here in Dublin, I know very few people besides my partner and his close friends. I also work from home five days a week (currently, at least: I’m considering joining a coworking space). I’m trying to craft a safety net for myself, and the main feeling I feel about it is impatience. I want an overnight fix: I want to wake up tomorrow and have a book club to attend, and dinner dates on the calendar, and several close friends who just get me. 

Of course, I know that these things take time in any city, in any stage of life. One thing that’s been weird and hard about the last few months is realizing that, as much as I am on the lookout for new friends, not everyone that I meet is in that same situation. Some people are absolutely lovely and we may hit it off, but they may also be extremely busy or, honestly, just not looking to expand their social circle. It’s hard not to take that personally, even though, to be honest, that’s how I was in my last few months living in New York. I wasn’t on the lookout to make new friends, and if someone had tried, with me, I’d like to think I’d have made the effort but I’m also not totally sure. I felt busy and kind of like I was at my max capacity just getting by. I know none of this is a reflection on me, personally: at the same time, when I don’t have a ton of social connections here, anything even close to a rejection feels very personal.

Luckily I moved one bestie with me to Ireland.

I’m trying to give myself credit for the little steps that I take, even when they feel scary: if I meet someone I like, I follow them on Instagram, and then when I’m feeling brave I’ll DM them. Gold star! If I ask one of Peter’s friend’s partners to lunch, the one who lives very close to me and is always so sweet, that’s a huge pat on the back. I can’t really optimize my way to an ideal circle of friends within six months of moving here: what I can do, instead, is make sure I plan for some face-to-face New Friend Time each week, and see where that takes me. It can feel hard, at times, to balance that with the crushing feeling of missing my close friends back home, the people who already just get me. I’ve done a good job of scheduling recurring video calls with a few people in the states, and that’s been so nice, but then I’ll get tempted to count those calls as my socializing time. I know it’s not the same as actually putting myself out there in the physical world here in Dublin. I’m a homebody by nature, and I have to psyche myself up to leave the house, even though I always end up enjoying myself when I go somewhere new.

The thing is, of course, that I need a mix of both: I need to maintain my old friendships, and treat them like the precious things that that they are, and I also need to muster the energy and courage to put myself out there in this new place. Currently I’ve been able to meet new people just by going out and doing things I’d already like to do, like volunteering or hanging out with Peter’s friend groups. I haven’t yet resorted to Bumble BFF, which I am all for in theory, but which in practice makes me want to die. (I was always bad at dating apps and the idea of having to swipe right or left on friends makes me feel super uncomfortable, even though the pragmatist in me is like, come on, this seems very convenient.) Maybe I’ll join a Meetup group and find my book club that way. For now, my update is that what I’m doing seems to be working, even if slowly: I have three or four women I can now text to hang out with on a semi-regular basis, and that’s not nothing, in fact, it’s a lot. And I do feel gratitude both for them, and for myself for trying. 

Sometimes I leave the house!

….while drowning in life admin

I was not put on this earth to fill out paperwork. I know you’re probably like, duh, me either. But for whatever reason, admin-type tasks send me into a tailspin of procrastination, ineptness and then ultimately a big, heaping pile of shame. Once I eventually do them I always end up with this lightbulb moment, like, oh, that wasn’t even that bad. But then that makes me shame spiral all over again, because - you mean to tell me that I procrastinated for THAT long on something that wasn’t even ultimately very hard??

To avoid overwhelm I’ve been trying to do each of my admin tasks one at a time, because otherwise I will bury my head in the sand and procrastinate on all of them. At first I thought this meant that I could pause everything else until my visa was approved. After all, what could be more important than acquiring legal permission to continue living in this country? But I am currently in a holding pattern waiting for the visa, and other tasks have started to take on a greater urgency: for example, I need a Public Services Number in order to complete some basic doctor’s appointments, and also to get a bank account or file taxes. (Yikes.) I also need to hire two accountants in order to file my taxes this year: one in the US, and one here in Ireland. (I did manage to get these two people finalized this week, which feels like a major win.)

Managing all of this stuff concurrently, as dumb as it may sound, has been breaking my brain. I know that a lot of adulthood is just this way. You can’t catch breaks on things you don’t want to do just because you don’t want to do them. And yet I feel so salty to be in this season of life: isn’t it enough that I’m (successfully) managing a freelance career after moving countries? Isn’t it enough that I’m putting myself out there socially, even though it’s hard and scary and feels uncomfortably like dating again? Why do I also have to do paperwork in order to qualify for a Pap smear?!