[atto]

I moved to a new town a few years ago, and was worried about forming a new social group. What did it for me: be the instigator. Most people want to improve their social connections, and many have the same sort of "starting problem". Being the one to organize events is a surprisingly easy way to immediately have many people around, and importantly lets you set the terms of the engagement.

The best short, easy resource on what I mean is this book: https://party.pro/book/. The Art of Gathering is another good one if you want to go deeper.

You may be concerned that you don't know many people, so can't easily organize an event where people would come. This is actually solvable (see the book above). The nice thing is that this also lets you risk and experiment with social failure ("what if people don't show?", etc), which in my experience is the cause of a lot of social anxiety.

[nicbou]

This works indeed. Unfortunately, you might realize just how flaky people can be. My circle strengthened around the people who commit and show up.

[meiraleal]

Nice! That was exactly my strategy too and worked so well. Will read the book recommendation! Thanks!

Out of curiosity, to which town did you move to?