Speak plainly when hurt; briefly when angry.

A clean wound heals; a theatrical wound becomes a career. Name the specific sin, propose the small repair, and do not forward the minutes to the group chat. Apologies should be nouns (“I was cruel”), not weather reports (“things were said”).

Anyway, here is your first existential tip: friendship is impossible, and therefore it must be done. If it were possible, it wouldn’t matter. Only impossibilities have meaning. Only impossibilities are worth doing.

A friendship is mostly b-roll. Errands, waiting for buses, being wrong about directions together. If every meeting requires a highlight, you’re dating the spectacle, not the person. Share a silence without leaping to fill it with facts about magnesium. If you can be boring together you can be alive together.

Learn to be findable.

This is the hardest. Being findable means living somewhere in public: a regular table, a habitual lane, a community noticeboard with your handwriting on it. It means answering invitations with an answer, not a fog. It means having a door that opens.

Be the one who convenes.

Everyone is tired. Everyone secretly wants someone else to ring the bell. Host the cheap thing. Name the time and end. Say, “door is soft; leave when you must.” Put crisps in a bowl. Friendship is logistics performed tenderly.

Go where hands do things.

Bars are museums of speech