Often Lonely, Seldom Alone

Reflections on a nutty 2025

I often felt alone over the last year, walking - at times stumbling - down an obstacle-strewn path that seemed consistently unfamiliar. No matter how many people are close by and experiencing similar things, some life events cannot be shared. You need to make sense of them yourself.

Responding to the loss of our home in the 2025 fires. Knowing hundreds of others that were impacted by the same event. Supporting parents facing illness. Losing one. Having my kids turn 21 and 18. These memorable events joined a typical year’s-worth of new things. Even though many around me lived through very similar years, each of us came through a deeply individual experience.

As I look back on 2025 and reflect on my own, private journey, I am struck by how much time I spent with other people. The year required a lot of internal work, but it was not a year spent in isolation.

At the start of 2023, my kids gave me a New Year’s resolution: “Dad, your resolution this year is to make more friends.” After some righteous indignation at having a resolution foisted on me, I accepted this as an un-asked-for gift.

What followed was more an intentional continuation than a reset. I leaned into some spaces that already offered regular community. Some were formal. Some were informal. Some were connected to work, others weren’t. Over the last decade I’ve had the good fortune to work with people who value integrity and are trying, in their own ways, to make positive change. Those relationships deepened gradually, often without much ceremony.

There were also practices that required returning, even when it would have been easier to step away. The specifics matter less than the rhythm. You show up. You listen. You keep coming back.

Out of that broader context, the SidePorch coffees took shape. We planned them to be informal, no agendas and no asks. A place to gather and spend time with people whose company I valued.

What stood out over time wasn’t the number of people who came, but the fact that the coffees continued. Not every week. Not always with the same people. But often enough that conversations carried forward and familiarity accumulated. Others valued this time together as well. It began to feel less like an event and more like a community. (HERE’s the recap from the gathering we held immediately after the fires.)

Only later did I start to notice what that continuity made possible. Conversations resumed after gaps. Introductions happened without much effort. Threads overlapped.

I read an article in last week’s The Economist that examines loneliness across countries and income levels. One of its arguments: loneliness is shaped less by individual disposition than by circumstance. Time scarcity. Mobility. Poverty. Disability. The pressures that leave little room for unstructured connection. The piece framed loneliness as a structural condition rather than a moral or psychological failure.

That framing stayed with me because it pointed toward design rather than diagnosis. It raised questions about what makes presence easier to sustain, and what quietly gets in the way.

I didn’t begin last year with those questions in mind. The fires hit, and for months we did our best to react to whatever was required in the moment. Over time, the focus shifted. The question became whether the things that steadied me could remain open. Whether they could hold more than one person. Whether they were worth maintaining even when they stopped feeling urgent or personal - particularly when other challenges arose.

I saw how often connection depends on small, repeatable gestures. An invitation that isn’t precious. A chair pulled out. A willingness to host without scripting the outcome. None of this guarantees anything. It simply lowers the barrier enough that people can step across.

This post sits between two pieces of writing that matter to me. The last marked a farewell to a constant presence in my life, shared after a long pause in these writings. The next continues that farewell, but with an eye to how we continue after a loss.

This felt like the right place to pause and reflect on the community I get to rely upon for support in sense making, for remembering, for grooving into a new and different 2026.

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Let me know if you’d want to be added to the list for invites to the SidePorch coffees we’ll be organizing in 2026!