I've been fighting age-related loneliness by organizing coworking days and nights with friends

I've been actively fighting almost guaranteed age-related loneliness for years, studies show after age 30 you start seeing friends less and when you get older especially men don't have any social life left!

It's preventable, but it takes effort and initiative

We've now organized 70 weekly coworking days where we meet with friends and work together, do show and tell, and try help each other make things (also hardware stuff more recently)

We've also started organizing movie nights, art nights, barbecues, we watched the World Cup final on a projector screen in the garden with friends

We did a collage night the other day where we bought cheap gossip magazines, colored paper, and Pritt glue, and gave everyone scissors to make their own art, I think nobody spent time on their phone for at least 4 hours, making things puts you in a flow state and it's fun to do it in a group because you talk about different stuff while making things than you would for ex having a dinner

Movie nights are nice too but less popular I think cause everyone prefers to watch movies alone and also you can't really talk during a movie

Coworkings range from having sometimes 20 people to sometimes just 2 people, people have their own lives, but me and @rameerez still try to organize them weekly

One thing I realized is that we are usually the ones organizing stuff, but that's not a bad thing, there's even studies about this, there's usually a few people in a group who organize most of the events

If nobody in your group organizes stuff, it doesn't mean nobody wants to do stuff, but you have to take the initiative to bring people together which isn't easy in a time where phones and apps and the internet are simply easier and cheaper dopamine than driving to a friends house for a party

You can start with a coworking day, everyone brings their laptop, and you provide WiFi and coffee, then later you can try more types of events

Having an active social life is just as important or in some studies even more important for health than physical fitness

After a nice party I feel tired but satisfied, I had fun and didn't spend time on my phone or computer but instead talked and laughed with friends etc.

We don't drink alcohol with very few exceptions and nor do our friends, so it's mostly just having really nice food and sparkling water or kombucha etc, and we don't really need alcohol, after a few hours it gets fun enough anyway!

So I recommend everyone, take initiative, and organize something and get people together, it'll be fun! 😊

Organizing can be cheap or if you want to spend more money on it not so cheap, you can also ask people to bring food to save on costs

@theannalux tracks the nights we organized and we've spent about $5K on it in food for 26 nights (ex coworkings)

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