Hi I’m Harvey and I’m 22. I live in Hertfordshire, just outside London.
I noticed there really aren’t many ways to meet people my age where I live and with a lot of people I knew from my years of education having gone onto university and moving away I noticed my friendship circle had dwindled down to almost nothing.
In addition to this I was also struggling with unemployment, this especially affected me during the winter months – where with the early darkness, I often felt trapped inside alone during work hours.
After a Google search on “Ways to meet people in your 20s”, I stumbled upon The Great Friendship Project.
Finding Community in London
Being autistic comes with its own set of obstacles, and for me, navigating public transport was a major one.
But with London right on my doorstep, I eventually built up the courage to make the quick train ride over for the first time to see if it was for me.
The events quickly became a highlight of my week, I began attending whenever I could to board games nights, quizzes, social walks – anything that caught my interest, sooner than I ever could have imagined I began making genuine friendships.
Every time I went, I was looking forward to seeing my new friends, as well as meeting new people.
Thanks to the project – I now have multiple different circles of friends and regularly meet up with them independently outside of the community activities.
It’s been amazing being around such good and ambitious people and it’s helped re-inspire me to undertake a long term goal of mine to go solo travelling for the first time which I did just a couple months into starting attending the project’s events.
Rebuilding Confidence and Motivation
I also felt re-motivated to seek employment, something I had almost given up on, and I am now in a job that I enjoy, I have become more active, re-connected with my spirituality and realised the importance of making face to face connections.
In this day and age, it can be very easy to fall into the trap of spending your free time mindlessly scrolling through social media, and I feel like I am healthier for being able to avoid that and instead embracing the freedom of going out and about into the real world.
I feel incredibly excited about life at the moment, I hope to be able to to save enough to move out within the next couple years and hopefully live in London.
As in many ways, I feel really foolish for not having taken full advantage of living so near to it all my life and I hope to rectify that, as it really is a wonderful city with amazing people!
