In the last year I’ve tried to come out of my safety zone and get out in the world and meet new people. I’ve always been someone who has had a reasonable amount of friends, but since Corina and I moved to Cambridge its become harder to get together with friends who live out of town. Most our friends who did live in Kitchener migrated back to Paris, while Corina and I were moving the other way as we both landed jobs in Guelph and looked to cut down on commute time. We then moved to Clyde, which is on the far side of Cambridge and this only added to the problem of not seeing people, since Clyde isn’t central to anything.

Since Corina and I had moved to a new city(to me at least), I really wanted to get out and meet some people. Working as a designer I found I really wanted to get out and meet peers in my field. Where I work now I’m the only designer, so being able to talk shop with other designers really appealed to me. Inherently I’m not the most outgoing person in the world, so getting out there and meeting people was a big hurdle to cross and last March I went to my first Meetup of the Waterloo Region Web Design & Technology Group. The first night I came out we met up at The Huether in Waterloo and I had a really good time. The group wasn’t too big and I got to make some good contacts.

Over this Winter I had intended on playing hockey with my Dad for the first time in his Sunday morning beer league, but that didn’t materialize at all for me. That left me with nothing active to do over the winter. In November I discovered that there was a co-ed indoor soccer league running Cambridge that was starting the winter session in January. I tried to get my old team that used to play co-ed together, but there was a general lack of interest because of prior commitments, pregnancies or just lack of money. So instead of relying on other people to go along with me I decided to sign up as an individual player and go it alone. Before going to my first game I was a little nervous about playing with people I didn’t know. Turns out pretty much everyone on my team is pretty nice and we make up a pretty solid team so far. The other thing I liked is that there were no preconceived notions. I find when you play with people you know you tend to get typecast as to what you can and can’t do on the field. With a team of people I don’t know I’m able to forge my own identity on the field. It’s rather liberating in that regard.

I just felt like sharing my experiences with everyone. I find as you get older it’s so much easier to fall back on your laurels and not get out there in the world. I’m not a particularly outgoing person, but going out and meeting new people definitely has been an enjoyable experience for me. Next week I’m planning on going to a the Tech Triangle Tweetup in Kitchener. As Radiohead said, meeting people is easy.