How are you staying in touch with people?

[petra]

It's been a little more difficult than usual being social. How's that going for you, and what kind of conversations are you missing having?

Comments

[petra]

My weekly group activities have turned into weekly Zoom hangouts and I've been making myself more available for hanging out online with friends and voice chatting. I miss the little catching-up conversations that used to happen around the edges of Doing Things Together.

[daegaer]

I'm WhatsApping like it's my job 😅 I also just got done with Skype language class, and have been using Zoom for work and socialising with my colleagues.

[petra]

Skype language class sounds like a great idea.

Zoom has really taken over the world recently, hasn't it?

[dine]

I'm trying to e-mail, call or text people more often. and I'm writing notes and sending postcards to folks just to say 'hi'

[petra]

I'm trying to text more often, too, but I find it hard to start conversations with people I would normally see face-to-face.

[althea_valara]

Just commenting more on Dreamwidth & Ravelry in general. I actually have been spending less time playing my MMO, but often my guild is all doing their own thing anyway so it's not like I'm missing much conversation there.

[petra]

Connecting more with DW and Ravelry makes sense. What MMO do you play?

[althea_valara]

Final Fantasy XIV. It’s got a lot of quality of life features that make it easy to play casually, which is good because the last thing I need is to become addicted to a game again. And the story is fantastic.

But... I’m a former Final Fantasy XI player, and while it wasn’t good for me in some ways, I really miss the camaraderie of it. In XI, the best way to level was to make a party with other players, find a camp, and then stay put for several hours. You naturally would get to know other players because you were spending so much time together.

In XIV, the best way to level is to do Duty Roulettes, in which you are matched up with random players who might not even be from your server, and you do a random 30 minute dungeon together. It can be lots of fun with the right group, but usually people are focused on clearing quickly so there’s no chit chat, and because it’s a random group of players, no chance at making lasting connections.

I am in a linkshell (Final Fantasy’s name for a guild) that I sometimes do activities with, but I am very shy about asking for help so most of the time I’m playing solo. But there’s a lot you can do solo in the game, so that’s good, I guess.

[petra]

I can see how having a group of people to camp out with would be much better socially than a 30 minute in-and-out dungeon. Maybe not so great for your offline life, but more fun.

Casual gaming is about my limit too. I'm glad you have something that suits your speed.

[fred_mouse]

Our Tuesday night board gaming group has turned to a mix of Zoom (until we run out of free minutes), Discord (where this week we worked out how to do a video chat), and horsepaste.com, which allows for us to play one of our standard games. Next week I think we are going to try a different communal gaming site to see how one of the other standard games goes.

Our Wednesday night singing group experimented with watch2gether.com, which was kind of fun. I found the interface a bit glitchy and it wasn't wonderfully social, but it might be good for other common activities. We are going to try again next week -- possibly picking good Karaoke songs rather than random silliness (which is what we tried this time).

For work, our team is aiming to have a 10 minute morning meeting -- still getting the feel for keeping it short; different people dominate on different days, depending on what the current work topic is, so that is good. And then our morning tea group have a daily meeting over a cuppa, which different people attend depending on their work days. This one is actually starting to be too much people for me, so I might cut that down to M/W/F and see how it goes.

Which pretty much covers my standard social activity. I don't go out in the evenings, people come to me, because it has been a decade and change since I've had the oomph to leave the house in the evenings (I flirt with the idea every few years, nothing has lasted).

What I'm missing is my once-weekly catchup with partner-who-lives-elsewhere. They are too high risk, and one of their household is an essential worker, so we won't see each other for who knows how long.

[petra]

Oo, online Codenames sounds like a lot of fun. I'll have to see if I can get my family to play that with me.

My Wednesday night singing group has done karaoke over Zoom, which is not as social as one would like--it's not possible to hear anyone else singing, so while I know other people are doing the same as I am, the communal experience is only theoretical.

I'm sorry you're missing your partner who lives elsewhere. That sounds very difficult.

[fred_mouse]

I hope you all enjoy the codenames! We've only had 5 people turning up, so we are planning next week to try two spymasters against each other with the other three guessing on both sides (so that the social aspect of 'which should we pick' actually happens). Which would mean that that it is one or other spymaster who 'wins'.

I imagine that we won't so much be doing Karaoke, but encouraging people to put up songs we can sing along to. This thought inspired by the inclusion of Bohemian Rhapsody in this week's set.

[mific]

A couple of Zoom get togethers each week with different sets of friends, and some whatsapping. Plus occasional phone calls with a friend in Aussie. I've mostly worked from home for a while, but I miss the intermittent face to face contact with work friends I used to have. But I just left that job right before our lockdown happened, so that would have ended anyway. I mostly miss my cat Possum TBH, who I lost several months ago (he was 18). I'll get another cat friend, but not until this has eased a bit.

[petra]

I'm sorry you lost your cat friend. This seems like a difficult time to be without fuzzy companionship, but equally a hard time to find new companions.

Intermittent face-to-face contact is something I'm missing more than I thought I would, considering how much time I have previously spent at home. But the part where it's simply not an option weighs on me.

[desireearmfeldt]

I am inviting friends for small group or one on one real time online hanging out -- kind of slowly as I think of folks or free time materializes. Have been going to my theatre group's online script reads and one (so far) online live roleplaying game. Talking to my parents on the phone more often than usual. I'm still running a couple of hobby group things that involve some regular communication.

Also, spouse and I are taking advantage of having fewer group social things & hobby meetings without each other to spend more quality time together. (Though he's showing unsurprising tendency to lose time sense and let work and non-work time bleed into each other even more than usual, which I'm trying to convince him to fight.)

[petra]

It sounds like you have a good spread of communication opportunities!

The bulwark my SO and I have implemented against work-time taking over everything is that we take a walk together at the end of his daily work. It doesn't necessarily help for the mental side of letting work bleed into things but it introduces a greater level of separation between work and non-work than he would otherwise have.

[desireearmfeldt]

We've been doing a similar thing with regular dinnertime 'date.'

[petra]

That makes very good sense.