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I rebooted my social life

takes.jamesomalley.co.uk

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Re: I rebooted my social life

#341

Post by mettamage »

capisce wrote: post #320
mettamage wrote: post #136

> I’ve got no idea, I’m too busy gaming on my Playstation 5 and living a life of selfish consumption. This is in another article of his about not having kids. But I think just focusing on enjoyment in life is a poor human experience. Life has much more to offer that is equally interesting. Enjoyment isn't the only game in town. And the other things that life has to offer, can be fucking painful. But I'd still say it'…

> But I think just focusing on enjoyment in life is a poor human experience. Life has much more to offer that is equally interesting. Enjoyment isn't the only game in town. I assume this person is employed, so they're probably already doing quite a lot more than just hedonistic enjoyment.

That's fair.

Here's where I'm coming from.

With the Leetcode stuff going on I'm doing a lot more than 40 hours per week. Nevermind I also need to learn actual tech developments outside my job.

Other than that I put 10 to 20 hours of time into personal development. I've done this since I was a teenager.

All of this feels brutal, but my life does seem to get better over time. Though, I am not at a place in my career where I want to be, but in part that's because I find it really tough to know where I want to go, so I tend to do everything. Unfortunately, being an average/above average xyz in multiple domains doesn't do much (currently in pentesting, software engineering, data engineering and being a data analyst).

Re: I rebooted my social life

#342

Post by throwaway777x »

urban_strike wrote: post #282
tootie wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These kind of findings are probably accurate on average, but not to a person. Some people are wired differently. Some (presumably most) require community and extensive social connection. I really think that some of us just need much, much less. I don't get much sense of reward from social interactions. It really does just feel like a dull chore most of the time. Even with people I genuinely like and respect.

Yeah, I've been trying to wrap my head around this recently. I always get a bit irked by the inevitable comments confidently asserting things like "humans are social animals, if you think you don't need tight social connections you're just hurting yourself". And then pointing to these results averaged out over the entire population as "proof". It seems like there's got to be some statistical fallacy being made, like…

I think it is like the way getting married is statistically more healthy.

Friends and a partner act like a small life coach. I am sure many unhealthy habits are correlated with being left entirely to your own devices. I know I would go to the doctor more if I had a partner coaching/bugging me that I go more.

We are the outliers. If everyone was wired like me, the concept of a dinner party would simply not exist and Facebook would look like this.

Re: I rebooted my social life

#343

Post by mlrtime »

brightball wrote: post #183
alexpotato wrote: post #10

Back in 2019, got to go to Hong Kong for a couple months for work and got to bring my family. I was about to turn 40 and realized that the place we were staying had a rock wall. In a somewhat "mid life crisis" spur of the moment decision, I decided to go buy shoes, a belt and a chalk bag (I did a lot of indoor rock climbing in college). We get there and the rock wall is a. closed and b. only for kids. Get back to the…

I think people often underestimate how, for dad's in particular, there's a massive need for this. Prior to Covid, I'd started a Wednesday "Dad's Night" where we just got together from 9-10 in my backyard to hang out and have a beer. Eventually we'd move to random local pubs and often it would go to 11pm. It grew with consistency as people would invite other folks. Had one of the assistant basketball coaches from Clem…

One thing I noticed, is that as I meet other new Dads in my area, they are all inviting me to go do things.

I mean not just 1 or 2, every single time. It maybe golf, gun range, driving, anything. I'm a introvert that has problem scheduling time, but a lot of Dads don't have male friends and are desperately seeking other male-only quality time.

Re: I rebooted my social life

#344

Post by danparsonson »

velebit_horvat wrote: post #205

You lost me at "And because my partner and I don’t have—nor want—kids,".

Counterpoint: if more people would think more carefully today about whether or not having kids was right for them, there will be less troubled adults in tomorrow's world. Having children is not the be-all and end-all, and not everyone rises to the challenge of being a good parent.

Re: I rebooted my social life

#345

Post by mlrtime »

tormeh wrote: post #331
nunez wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It definitely can be a chore. I organized a large (600+-person at its peak) Meetup in Park Slope, Brooklyn, NY during Meetup's hayday (2010-ish). Meeting heaps of different people from all walks of life was interesting at first. But like a previous poster stated, connections like these are fleeting and take a lot of work to maintain (especially if you're a man, which I am; see the end of this post for more on that).…

Have you tried getting meta about sports and video games? I don't care about sports, but I'll be interested if you talk to me about the business of sports clubs or the technicalities of stadiums. Video games have a lot going on around them: The lawsuits and general weirdness around how Disco Elysium was made is the stuff of several documentaries, for example. Anecdotally, I'd say women are worse when it comes to inte…

> I'd say women are worse when it comes to interests

You're looking at it wrong, or from a Mans perspective. Woman don't need the same "activities" or "hobbies" as men, these are doing thing that Men like.

Woman just need to socialize to socialize. Thats why they have book clubs, brunches and wine/art. They just need to talk.

YMMV: This is all generally speaking.

Re: I rebooted my social life

#346

Post by OJFord »

tekno45 wrote: post #188
skeeter2020 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no interest in starting a club, but what I do (and you can too) is open your activity to others, (a) for easy access, and (b) with no strings. Typically all this means is reaching out to a small group to say "hey I'm planning to do ; want to come?". Encourage them to pass on your invite, don't take it personally if nobody comes (or even responds) and when they do bond over you shared love of . Maybe this grows…

this sounds like a club.

Not really, they said 'maybe this grows into a club', and I agree that just asking if someone wants to come along to something you're going to do isn't a club.

Once you don't need to ask, because it has a standing slot and standing membership, that's a club; once it has organised and centralised payments, that's a club.

"Hey tekno45, pub?" is not an initiation of a drinking club.

Re: I rebooted my social life

#347

Post by SamoyedFurFluff »

socalgal2 wrote: post #242
alexpotato wrote: post #10

Back in 2019, got to go to Hong Kong for a couple months for work and got to bring my family. I was about to turn 40 and realized that the place we were staying had a rock wall. In a somewhat "mid life crisis" spur of the moment decision, I decided to go buy shoes, a belt and a chalk bag (I did a lot of indoor rock climbing in college). We get there and the rock wall is a. closed and b. only for kids. Get back to the…

This is awesome and I wish I had the courage to do it. My experience is, in the USA, eventually nearly every meetup is ruined by politics. Eventually someone says something unintentionally trigging someone else and then off it goes.

In my experience honestly this isn’t common. People really hate disagreeing IRL and can often sniff out when a disagreement is happening that’s just a form of trying to control the environment unnecessarily due to one’s personal issues. However it is important not to be too tolerant to straight up antisocial behavior that uses “don’t be political” as a form of self defense too. I’ve definitely had to kick out guys who did shit like treat women in the group like unwilling romantic targets even after being turned down, or guys who take being turned down personally and then tried to call the woman a fat cow over it who then also tried to use “stop being sensitive and political” as a cover for just being a poorly socialized male.

Re: I rebooted my social life

#348

Post by jeduardo »

JodieBenitez wrote: post #335
eamo_d wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inter European travel is quite cheap so considering the author is based in the UK, this is middle class.

I'm european and don't find inter european travel cheap. I guess I'm poor :-)

Maybe yes but also maybe not. Intra-european travel can be cheap but it can also be expensive. You can take a Ryanair flight and a local train to stay somewhere cheap for a couple days. But you can also take a expensive Lufthansa flight to stay in a big city where costs can be similar or higher to where where you are. It will always depend of where you are and where you'd like to go to.

My impression is that nowadays the UK has more cheap flight options than the rest of Europe and that trains aren't as cheap as they used to be a decade ago.

Re: I rebooted my social life

#349

Post by SamoyedFurFluff »

iamnothere wrote: post #121
andrewl wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What country are you in?

The US. I think the increased political polarization has changed things somewhat, as well as the aging of my peer demographic. People tend to become more close-minded and fixed in their beliefs as they age, so if you’re a freethinker who enjoys thought experiments and challenging norms then it’s difficult to find others who are similar. Even many so-called “freethinkers” merely regurgitate common talking points and c…

Can you name a few topics that you feel benefit from taking an abhorrent position as a way to understand the truth? I also deeply seek open ended conversations about incredibly thorny subjects but I almost never purposefully take a position to I consider abhorrent in order to do so. For example while I am curious about and want to understand antisemitism as a political movement, I don’t see how actually adopting antisemitic beliefs even as a thought exercise would make me understand them more. I find I much more benefit from trying to develop a framework of analysis based on a mix of books from experts (which help as a kind of a meta study crystallized into a person with deep expertise in a subject) and witnessing individual antisemetic acts to see if they fit into the metanarrative by the experts— if they don’t, why not, etc.

Re: I rebooted my social life

#350

Post by anon84873628 »

lelandbatey wrote: post #306
levocardia wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of it is the uncomfortable fact that it is not very much fun to spend time with people who have small children -- it's hard to have a real conversation for more than a few minutes, and if you yourself don't have kids, what their life revolves around right now (daycare, finding a kindergarten, etc) is just not going to be very interesting.

Kids are at least as interesting as having to take care of any other living things. As strange as it may seem, if you can ask questions about someone's multiple aquariums, their cats or dogs, their horses or cows, then there's at least, probably more to ask about their children. I don't understand how raising a child can be anything but interesting. Every parent I speak to about having kids has such different philoso…

Eh, to an extent. But on any given day kids are usually in some phase where they only want to talk about dinosaurs or Micky Mouse or something. It gets repetitive after an hour.

I like playing with kids for a while but I won't pretend it is intellectually stimulating. Sometimes you can find something new to blow their mind though.

When they get to teen years they are capable of more interesting conversations but then often don't want to hang with adults. There is a pretty limited sweet spot of ages.

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