My experience is similar. I used to never find the "right time" to ask people to meet up. It got worse over time, because now it had been so long, I felt bad for not reaching out and maybe they didn't really want to keep in touch anymore anyway. Then I started more often consciously deciding to reach out anyway because the mythical right time isn't going to be next week either.

Everybody has the reaction you described. They all seeemed to be unhappily stuck in the same mindset I was, and nobody went ahead and tested the hypothesis.

It just takes one.

I live in a building with 25 apartments. Nobody really knew their neighbours. After I had been living there for almost five years, one tenant decided that everybody should meet for a barbecue in the yard and get to know each other. Now, we all know the people living next to us, we meet regularly for dinners or barbecues and chat. We have a WhatsApp group where we exchange news and favours. I'm almost sure that without this one person's initiative, most of us would still be strangers. Apparently, everybody thought it was a pity that we don't know each other better, but nobody else kicked things off until that one guy did and showed us that we all felt the same way.