Are you willing to hang around with any people that don't mind you hanging around? If not, then your loneliness is a choice. Maybe an unconscious one but still, a choice. In that case you have chosen to value your alone time more than the social time with people you possibly don't click with. At this point you are aware of something you feel you deserve, having rejected the things you feel you don't deserve.
Ask HN: How do you cope with loneliness?
31–40 of 82 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do you cope with loneliness?
#32You may come to find that 95% of people are assholes anyway. And the remaining 5% are perfect assholes. I don't too much believe in friends just different people with different agendas. I would say of all the people I've met in my life >=.01% where for any period of time actually friends. If anything work on diplomacy and worry about yourself. As for members of the other sex, just remember they're after the same thin…
And after all we're just loose clouds of atoms and free will is an illusion, so stop worrying and start liking people. You don't have any choice anyway.
Re: Ask HN: How do you cope with loneliness?
#33Get a job outside the dorm/studio/home to fill your free time. Get a cat. Play RPG games. (not being sarcastic, that's how I dealt with my five years of university)
Upvoted, but I have a small disagreement: do NOT take a cat (or any animal) while lonely. You won't truly get rid of loneliness, but you will decrease your motivation (by providing small distractions). Animals are fun, but get friends first.
Re: Ask HN: How do you cope with loneliness?
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you like dancing, then I too highly recommend dancing! A majority of my (admittedly largely disastrous) romantic life was based on dancing. Note: this only works if you like it and you're good at it. The latter often results naturally from the former. Parties are also great. My current relationship was the result of going to a School of Public Health crêpe party.
Seconded for Dancing. But you don't have to be good at it... Everyone who starts learning the Waltz or ChaCha (or Swing, or Tango) is appalling at it. And it's pretty liberating to be in a group of people all of whom are happy klutzes. At my (pretty tech-centric) university, the dance club had over 2000 members : the key selling point for the guys being 'girls like to dance'. And learning steps together has a logic c…
I didn't say great or excellent, just good. If you don't like it, you won't get good. Competence is sexy. Shared WTF will get you started, but that's about it. Shared passion is another level entirely.
Re: Ask HN: How do you cope with loneliness?
#35You may come to find that 95% of people are assholes anyway. And the remaining 5% are perfect assholes. I don't too much believe in friends just different people with different agendas. I would say of all the people I've met in my life >=.01% where for any period of time actually friends. If anything work on diplomacy and worry about yourself. As for members of the other sex, just remember they're after the same thin…
Sucks to be you. Enjoy life my friend, is not as bad you might think :)
I doubt he doesn't enjoy life. It's possible to enjoy life with such attitude too. And actually it's quite easy.
And no emotional hangover after "friends" fail you!
Re: Ask HN: How do you cope with loneliness?
#36Do you lag in developing social skills?
I have met very social people that moved to a new place, had 0 friends and you know what? they made new friends on weeks time(I'm talking from Spain). Do they have so good "social skills", no. The reason they made new friends quickly is because they love people and enjoyed being with other people instead of staying home thinking about excuses.
Your laptop, CS class is no excuse. Just remember, no excuses, just go out and meet people. If your brain stops you, refuse to think and do it, experience, don't plan. People is going to see you are alone,face it like a man, but it will change fast as you make new friends.
Re: Ask HN: How do you cope with loneliness?
#37being un lonely all starts with your own operations ...
first decide what you'll do ... ONLY THEN .. who to bring along
and theres MUCH subcontext that gets conveyed through communications
if you believe you're lonely .. thats going to seep out into your interactions
so find hobbies to unlone yourself ! lol
im also a big fan of IRC ... ive added tons of Facebook friends from IRC channels ... AND they're got really quality topics to talk about
Re: Ask HN: How do you cope with loneliness?
#38I'm in a similar situation. Although I got it pretty much under control.
----Long story alert----
Back in high school, in-class socialising with little out-of-school chit chats was enough for me. Few meetups here or there and the rest of time knees-deep in code and/or listening to music.
After high school I went freelancing and traveling way (2 foreign countries in different continents in 2 years, back in my home country now). Living 10k kilometers away from everybody you know is quite a loneliness :) I handled it quite well the first time, but got stuck quite worse the next time (too rural area). Also had same problems when moved back home - some old friends went abroad, some are quite different people now.
----Long story alert----
tl;dr been lonely badly in foreign places, managed to fix that
Few things that didn't work:
- Be dragged into parties I didn't like (theme or people) - there's nothing worse than mandatory socialising
- Locking myself in and working all around the clock
- Choosing money/savings over going out/socialising/traveling - you can't work unless you're sane. Saving in this area causes lower productivity and even less food on the table in the long run. Although it's always possible to go out cheaper :)
Few things that did work (works best when you use few of them!):
- Get out of town. Cycling and hiking works best for me. It's a nice way to keep yourself busy, while enjoying new experiences. Also, it's easy to socialize this way. Just say Hi! to anyone on the trial. Small chit chat will follow naturally. And health benefits is a nice bonus!
- Go to public parks, squares etc. Take a book or whatever (no headphones, this will cut your off from outside world) and just hang out there. Even if you're not lucky to score some random conversions, being around other people gives that warm socialising feeling
- Hit the streets. Just go for a walk. Better hit busy downtown streets - more possibilities for conversations, more being-around-other-people feeling. Again, without headphones/music works better.
- Pick up an indoor hobby. Reading, building models... Whatever works for you (although for me PC-based hobbies didnt work well..) Just enjoy yourself.
- Rock shows. Enjoy music, get a few drinks, talk to random people, party.. Evening well spent + maybe new friends or at least socialising/being in a crowd feeling :) Not sure about non-rock music based events, never been there.
- Hit the bars. Go to bars alone and start talking to strangers. Although this is one of the hardest things, requires a lot of courage :) But results are quite good.
edit: messed up smth with formatting, looks ok now...
Re: Ask HN: How do you cope with loneliness?
#39Start small, learn how to make small talk when you're out and about, shop assistants that sort of thing, get used to talking with strangers. Learn to listen, this is the secret to getting on with females. The other secret, when they tell you about a problem, don't immediately give them your suggestion for a solution, often you're being talked at, don't think you're being asked for an answer, you almost never are. The…
How to do small talk.
Small talk is NOT about making statements about stuff. Small talk means evoking an associative function which is part of every person. To activate this function in your system, please set the importance flagg for said function to 0, because chances are, if you are a nerd it is set to 0 by default.
Let's illustrate with the classic example.
Person A: "Nice weather, huh?"
Geek: "" Well, geek starts to think: "Oh is it? Wtf is nice weather anyway? The sky is a little bit cloudy but it is not raining. Mhm, how could we define 'nice' in this context? And even if I define 'nice' how do I synchronize this value with...
BUM! Half a second is gone, awkward silence is there already.
Now, let's stop trying to make statements of truth about the weather. Let's activate small talk association function.
Person A: "Nice weather, huh?"
Geek: "The weather-widget sucks because it is to hard for the end-user two switch location settings for when visiting places."
A: "Haha, lol, you do that computer stuff?"
G: "Only when my boss sees me."
Or something. Just keep going. Laugh about the situation and keep talking. Nobody takes this stuff serious anyway.
Re: Ask HN: How do you cope with loneliness?
#40I got a dog. Seriously. I'm cured.