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Steven Reubenstone's avatar

Being proactive is important. It's also important to figure out where longer lasting relationships will realistically form for you. Is it a meetup event, the workplace, a maker space...is it some place much different? What do you value most out of a friendship? These are some of things I think about.

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Nikil Ramanathan's avatar

Being proactive really resonates with me. I think that’s one of the biggest differences I’ve made over the years. And agree with you - optimizing for making friends around places you will be more often due to interests, life, etc. is important

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Kai's avatar

Rly like the genuine take of this piece.

Been thinking ab this too in the context of specifically knowledge workers - *why do we drift as we discover ourselves and become different*?

For knowledge workers, I wonder if a part of it is society pushing us to explore spaces and places where there are, frankly, fewer people who can relate. I see this happening more in your 30's. Similar to researchers who spend their time at the edge of the collective knowledge sphere - there are just few people that can occupy that mental headspace. My closest relationships atm are founders, co-founders, and creatives, bc we occupy similar headspaces.

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Nikil Ramanathan's avatar

Thanks, Jim!

Great point. I think as we get older, we get more clarity on what we want to achieve. And once we identify that, we find there's a smaller number of people who can relate/whose mindsets we align with because of this niche of knowledge. Definitely partly our own choices but also to your point societal pressures and standards.

I also think there's probably even dimensions within those groups you outlined. For example, while many of your close relationships are founders/creatives, I bet at a first principles level, you're all similar but maybe at a hobbies level or the companies that your closest friends are building are in different spaces, driven by different interests.

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Kai's avatar

Yes exactly - we all explore diff hobbies & interests. I wonder if the unspoken narrative that we are pushed to occupy newer social roles - as authority figures. But it's hard to live up to this. As a result, we're always trying diff paths (hobbies, companies, etc) which lead to diff roles as authority figures. And we figure out with enough time which authoritative roles we're most comfortable with.

It's a bit abstract, but I have tangible examples supporting this from my personal experience. It's been an iterative journey to understand and step into the authority that comes with the paths I've explored.

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