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Someone has recently moved to a different city and says: "I meet new people through a reading club and I attend music seminars to get to know people".
Why does the person choose present simple and not present continuous: "I am meeting new people through a reading club and I am attending music seminars..." It is something that is currently happening in his life, a new situation. So why choose present simple? To me present simple sounds more like a general fact, not a current situation.
Using the continuous form would be fine here.
By using the continuous form, the speaker would be highlighting the fact that the habit of meeting new people and attending music seminars is seen as being temporary. Indeed, one effect of the continuous form is to limit time frame of a situation. The perceived effect here would be that of presenting the habit as temporary.
With the simple form, the speaker does not bring the temporary nature of the habit to the foreground. Given the context, however, we naturally deduce that the habit will be temporary one. Without that context (that is, the speaker's recent move to new city), the hearer would no doubt understand the habit as being a permanent one.
See Depraetere, I. and Langford, C. 2019. Advanced English Grammar. A Linguistic Approach (second edition), 186-188. London: Bloomsbury.
