Love Thy Neighbor

I am not a good neighbor. I have a hard time reaching outside my shell to meet new people and talk to them. When we lived in apartments, we never bothered with getting to know neighbors. Many times, people moved so frequently that we would find out who they are and within a month or two, they'd be gone.

When we moved to our first house, I was excited to have neighbors. Then we learned that the house next door was an investment house and often it was empty, no renters. During the nearly 4 years we owned that house, there were about 5 different families that lived in that rental house next door. Most of the time, they were hardly ever home, and I never really bothered getting to know any of them.

As for the rest of the street, I met and chatted with the neighbors across the street a couple of times, and the neighbors to the left of us hit our car that was parked on the street once, so we met them but didn't ever really talk to them again.

When we moved here, I swore it would be different. On move-in day, I went over and met the next door neighbor. After that, she never really even said hello to me in passing, and then it got awkward. How do I try to be friends with someone who appears to have no interest in a friendship? Our kids play together, but we still hardly ever exchange words. And now we've lived here a year. I hardly know what to do. We also don't know the rest of the neighbors that share our driveway. One of the things is that they are never home. Hard to get to know someone who isn't there.

Growing up, I always knew the neighbors. Now that I'm the grown-up, I really have no idea how to approach it. I'm too shy and chicken.

Why is it so hard to be a good neighbor?