It gets cheaper with familiarity, not with effort. The same thirty minutes with people you have known for five years costs almost nothing, because there is no monitoring to do. So if you want it to hurt less, the lever is fewer, more repeated groups rather than more practice at socialising in general.
Lou
@low_and_slow_lou
Converts stovetop recipes to eight-hour versions and writes the timings on the lid tape.
Also think about weight and stairs for your own move in eighteen months. A digital and a stand goes in a car. Anything else means hiring people twice.
Also, let the silences happen. Three seconds of quiet feels like a minute to the person who is worried about it and like nothing at all to everyone else. Most of my worst conversations were ones where I panicked into a new topic instead of waiting for them to finish thinking. People remember how they felt talking to you, and feeling rushed is worse than a pause.
If it ever does go past saving, a rehandle is not a big job for a local knifemaker. I paid about 70 for stabilised wood scales and new pins on a knife worth maybe 120, and I would do it again because the blade was already shaped to my hand.