Ideas on how to meet new people?

[peppersprayfirstapologiselater]

Hi, does anyone have any good ideas on how to meet new people?
I'm 22, I've always been a really sociable kind of person, always had good friends around me etc. I've had a few changes over the last few months which has left me lacking in friends a little.

First I finished uni, I studied in my home city, so a lot of my friends moved back to their home cities and now all work full time and have children. 2 of my close friends moved abroad, my best friend has a new partner who she's really smitten with and now of course likes to spend a lot of time with him.

I also changed jobs, from a really social place, work felt like fun and I was surrounded by friends and laughter all day. My new job is much better for me in most other ways, I'm loving it and the people are all lovely and funny, but I'm the youngest here by about 20 years and my colleagues are all married with kids and all very busy.

My boyfriends group of friends are all nice but we keep our friends quite separate and the two don't really overlap.

I think my difficulty is that I'm really picky about who I spend time with and I guess I like a really particular kind of person. Most of my friends are similar to me, quite strong minded, opinionated, I like big personalities I guess. It might be good to meet some different types of people though.

I don't really have any specific hobbies, I work full time, gym 1/2 times per week but I don't really enjoy that😂 I enjoy cooking/eating and occasionally crochet. Crochet groups I've looked into and are attended by much older people where I live though and that's not really what I'm after.

What can I do!!! How can I meet fun, nice, normal people of a similar age? Help me!

you could try volunteering at a charity shop? you will meet a mixed range of people there of different ages x

Instead of gym what about a class? My old one had regular social nights - first a reasonably civilised mean then drinking for the younger ones

*meal

Meetup.com is good. Gives you a chance to meet others through a shared interest / hobby / area.

Oooh @zozozoo my gym does have classes but I never go to them! That's a really obvious one I didn't even consider, thank you!

And i couldn't think of anything worse than working in a shop for free of a weekend, after a whole work of... working😂 but hats off to people who can do that! X

*week of

There are quite a few threads like this on mumsnet. Maybe if you say where you live roughly a kindred spirit may find you.

If you're looking for strong minded and opinionated types - are you interested in politics? If so you could join your preferred local party and go along to meetings etc. I canvassed for Labour in the last election and met lots of other people in their 20s, went to the pub etc (it was A Momentum target seat, which probably helped).