Friendship is a co-adventure

This post was originally published in my newsletter.

I just spent a week in the middle of nowhere in the south of Spain at ‘RichFest 2’ (named after the organiser, Rich Bartlett), where about 20 people from the Internet gathered to enjoy each other’s company away from the familiar patterns of everyday life. There was a moderate amount of techno, there were participant-led workshops and there was all the joy of co-living, namely cooking and cleaning.

I had a wonderful time meeting new people, putting faces to names from Twitter and deepening a couple of relationships from previous in-person gatherings. There were some exceptionally resonant conversations that I suspect can only happen when you get a critical mass of like-minded weirdos together for a while.

In the last couple of days, as the social fabric started to shift towards a comfortable green velvet paired with a neon pink silk, I noticed a feeling that was remarkable in its absence from my normal life. I had the feeling that I was co-living with people, and I don’t mean in the ’living in a big house together’ sense. It felt like the adventures of my life were happening with other people who were also living their own adventures with me.

This sense is different from how my relationships with most of my friends has drifted with age, with living in a big city and with habit. It struck me that most of the time when I meet with friends in person or online, one of the first questions is some version of “so what have you been up to?” It’s like we’re living separate lives that we then tell each other about, not sharing in the living itself.

While it’s a genuine blessing to have friendships where we sincerely want to know how each other’s lives are unfolding, I realised that I also want more friends who I do life with rather than just talk about my life with. It seems that talking about my life takes me out of it somehow, putting me into a kind of reflective, evaluative mode that often makes my life feel less good than when I’m just living it.

‌And to my wonderful local friends who may be reading: this isn’t meant as a criticism of how we are together. I’m hugely grateful for all the friendships in my life, especially those that a comfortable, long-standing, high-trust friend group provides. Just consider this an invitation for further deepening and co-adventuring, if you want it.

I noticed another version of this experience a few months ago when I visited Barcelona with my partner Cécile. We were there at the same time as Paul, Angie and their daughter, and because Paul is also a self-employed weirdo, I had this wonderful, yet unfamiliar experience of impromptu hanging out.

Here in London, where I’ve lived for pretty much my entire adult life, with friends who are increasingly busy professionals, it’s common—necessary even—to arrange catch-ups weeks in advance, and then to walk or take public transport 30-60 minutes to get there. It’s always a thing that requires planning, coordination and a non-trivial amount of effort.

By contrast, it was a strange shock to my system that I could just send Paul a message in the morning and arrange to meet for brunch a 15 minute amble away. Of course, it helps that Paul’s schedule was as flexible as mine (he is the “Pathless Path” guy, after all), but it’s still striking how so much big city professional life makes these kinds of casual, low-key interactions less accessible.

The lesson I’m taking away from this is that there are forces in my current context that conspire to nudge me towards this strange kind of pseudo-isolation, a kind of loneliness that I was only able to notice by meeting a need I didn’t even know I had. Pushing back against these nudges requires some level of intentionality and environment design.

Here in London, I can be on the lookout for more events that might interest my friends and take more initiative in inviting people join me. Live music, the theatre or interesting talks all come to mind. Longer term, I can also decide to choose where I live based on proximity to friends, at least to the extent I have the resources and flexibility to do that.

In the online context, one of the best examples I’ve come across for cultivating this co-adventuring vibe is the use of personal feeds in Cosy Web style non-public online spaces, like a Discord server or Slack group.

My friend Tasshin has written an excellent article on how feeds work, but in short, imagine an invite-only common-interest community where each member gets their own channel (#feed-michael) to write about whatever is alive for them. Other members can hang out in other people’s feeds, reply, give emoji reacts (a truly overpowered social technology) and so on, which means everyone can be in the loop with what’s going on in real time and also feel seen by others—all without the need for ‘catch ups’.

I’m in a few such communities, but I’ve been giving more thought to how I might create some Cosy Web instances of my own. My Alexander Technique course is hosted on a non-public platform with community features, but it feels far too big to qualify, unless I create smaller sub-channels. I’m keeping my awareness open to any common-interests around which I might like to cohere say 30 engaged people, but for now it’s a quiet background aspiration.

If any of this has resonated with you, I’d suggest a couple of things.

The first is to look at your local, ‘physical’ friendships and see where you can make a shift from telling friends about your life to living your life with your friends. If your primary way of being with friends is, for example, regular catch-up-flavoured drinks or dinners, are there events or activities that you could enjoy together?

The second is to look at your online life and consider if you have friends who might be interested in creating a small, non-public Discord community where you can implement this feed model. Even a small-scale online co-working community could scratch a social itch you don’t even know you have.