No matter where your interests lie, you can find others on the Net with similar interests. You can meet these people and begin to exchange notes, learn from their experiences, and offer your own experiences in return. The support you can receive from online friends can be truly amazing.

But how do you begin to find them?

Let's start at Liszt, the Mailing List Directory, which offers over 90,000 mailing lists. You can search the directory, or you can browse through categories and finetune it from there. Let's say you're an elementary school teacher, and you want to meet other elementary teachers in different parts of the world. You'd click on Education, then on Elementary in the subcategories listing. Liszt boasts over 112 lists in the topic of education alone.
http://www.liszt.com/

Maybe you don't care about being able to post messages to mailing lists, but you're mainly interested in the most recent news in particular subjects. In that case, an e-zine or newsletter is more of what you're looking for. At the eZines Database, you'll find an extensive listing of e-zines to which you can subscribe. Categories include hobbies, fashion, fiction and poetry, military, and religion.
http://www.ezine-dir.com/

If you'd like to receive sample copies of newsletters, visit the Newsletter Library. The site offers over 11,000 free newsletters, and you simply choose whichever categories are of interest to you.
http://www.savvy.com/

Visiting the newsgroups is another way of meeting people that share common interests. Deja News is your best source for information on the newsgroups. Simply choose a category, out of possible categories such as political issues, diet, investing, or home and garden. Or, you can search for newsgroups by plugging in a keyword.
http://www.dejanews.com/

If you're interested in business-related e-mail discussion lists, visit The Marketing Resource Center: Listserv Directory:
http://www.marketingsource.com/

You can also participate in web-based discussion forums. Stop by Forum One: The Web's Search Engine for Online Forums, and search for the topic of your choice. Under the category of Health, you'll find 76 different health-related forums to choose from.
http://www.forumone.com/

Finally, Tile.Net/Lists allows you to search for discussion lists and newsgroups from one handy location. You can also join Tile.Net's mailing lists to receive the latest information on the topic of your choice, in major categories such as business, Internet, computers, and professionals.
http://tile.net/lists/