From Lonely to Connected: My Journey Through Good Neighbor Week

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In May of 2025, I moved 800 miles away from home to a city where I knew nobody. This September, my new home issued a proclamation celebrating Orlando’s first-ever Good Neighbor Week.

Like many new transplants, I missed the feeling of home. For four years, college had been a place where I almost overdosed on in-person interaction. I hung out with students on my floor, took long walks to visit friends in other dorms, and spent warm days joining picnic blankets on the lawn.

So I felt eerily alone as I moved to a new city. My old friends were far away, and it was hard to find and build new friendships around busy schedules, work demands, and burgeoning responsibilities of being a real adult.

And it’s not just me. There is higher reported loneliness among Gen Z and Millennials, with busyness and living far away from friends being the biggest barriers to connecting.

Jimmy Carter proclaimed Good Neighbor Day (September 28th) a holiday in 1978. The point is simple: get to know and celebrate the people around us because good neighborhoods make communities safer and healthier. Becky Mattson, who created the holiday, observed that while technology let us connect with people around the world, we seemed less likely to connect with our next-door neighbors. Robert Putnam’s research in Bowling Alone supports this with a staggering decline in social interaction beginning around the introduction of TVs, a trend that has only worsened with social media. Our new media environment makes it easier to avoid the awkwardness, small talk, and inconvenience of spending time with other people.

So I was thrilled when I met Megan on a Zoom call and learned she was from Orlando. When we grabbed coffee a few days later, she started my journey of calling Orlando home by asking me to help her plan the city’s first-ever Good Neighbor Week.

At first, I hesitated. Who was I, as a new resident, to help plan a celebration for a city and its people whom I didn’t know?

But then I remembered how I wanted living in Orlando to feel. Last Thanksgiving, I visited my godparents who had just moved to Syracuse and somehow were already enmeshed in their new home. Walking through downtown, I was amazed at how many people they knew by name: the liquor store owner, the pizza store employees, and everyone in the local hot chocolate spot. My godmother moved through the city with ease. And I wanted to feel that in my new city.

So I said yes, mostly because I knew I could make up for my lack of familiarity with Orlando by running our social media and website. But also because I wanted to move through Orlando with ease, like it was home.

For months, we planned. We hosted Neighbor Meeting Zones, where we sat in the park with a dog or lemonade and talked to anyone who wanted to meet a neighbor. I took my phone and a tripod to feature third spaces around Orlando. We secured some funding to help neighborhoods host Front Yard Fridays to encourage neighbors to spend time together. And we worked with our local government to officially proclaim September 28 through October 4 as Good Neighbor Week.

Megan started every meeting with our guiding principle: “Good enough for now and safe enough to try.” We didn't wait to be official, and we didn't need high attendance. The goal was to do what we could to bring neighbors together, and that was enough. This mantra gave us an exhale. It was okay if our Good Neighbor Week wasn’t the “best” in the country, engaged millions of people, or got a profile in a national newspaper, because that wasn't the goal. We were practicing being good neighbors and helping other Orlandoans do the same.

As we planned Good Neighbor Week, being a good neighbor started to feel natural. On my runs, I waved hello to the same two older men who took their daily walks at the same time and chatted with the park groundskeeper. I got to know the barista in my building’s coffee shop, and she told me which of the new seasonal drinks had milk in them. When my friends and family visited, I knew exactly where to take them to show them how big and beautiful Orlando was outside of the theme parks. Orlando felt like home.

The city’s proclamation said, “When neighbors know one another, they participate more in their community, care more and help build a more engaged and connected city.” And it’s right. I started feeling a responsibility to Orlando that I had not felt before. I kept a closer eye on local news and watched the mayoral debates. I became the go-to source for my new friends on the city’s new initiatives and ways to get involved. I realized I had begun choosing to make Orlando home instead of passively living there.

At its core, being a good neighbor is about taking responsibility for where you live. In her book Talking to Strangers, Danielle Allen evokes the image of a president moving through crowds without fear, shaking hands and kissing babies. “The more fearful we citizens are of speaking to strangers, the more we are docile children and not prospective presidents; the greater the distance between the president and us, the more we are subjects, not citizens.” Fear looks like avoidance and turning inwards. I felt it, thinking it wasn't my place to bring Orlandoans together. Good Neighbor Week isn't just an excuse to say hi to the people we share space with; it's a reminder of our responsibility to ourselves and our communities: to choose to belong and assert our power as citizens instead of giving it away.

If this story resonates with you, consider it a push to create the neighborhood you want to live in. Check out National Good Neighbor Day's resources for how to get involved locally, and if you want to support hosting events to build the future of your community, reach out here.