Ask HN: Getting old and boring – What can I do about it?

I'm 33 and I am becoming terminally boring.

I am primarily interested in my family (married, kids 7 and 3) and doing well at work, but that is about it? Outside of reading I have no hobbies, I am not part of any groups, I don't have any ambitions outside of home & work, and I don't drink or play video games or watch very much TV/movies. When I meet new people, I realize I don't have much to say because nobody cares about my work or my family or my books (nor should they, necessarily).

I have a great remote job which pays well without being too demanding. It doesn't sound like much, but after working, family time, chores, and some reading it feels like my day is already full. In fact, I usually end each day wishing I had spent more time being a better husband/father/home-owner/reader -- adding any hobbies would make these feelings worse.

I am generally happy with where I am at in life but I feel like there is something missing.

Does anybody else feel this way? Should I try to cultivate new interests? How do I find the time?

Why don't you do some shit with your family, like go on a vacation or go hiking or go sailing or go to museum. You'll spend time with your family and have something to talk about.

Coaching your kids' sports teams is a pretty mainstream social activity for a father of young kids. By age 7, my dad was involving me at least a bit in home repair & home improvement projects.

BTW - are you regularly reading to your kids? That also checks a lot of your boxes.

In general, I've found that making one's focus of curiosity less about 'how' and more about 'why' opens a lot of new doors, both introspectively and socially.

The social pressure to "be interesting" is one of the factors that I think leads to a lot of our collective misery. I think the problem is one of scale - if you're not engaging with other people because they don't share your interests, you may be hanging out with the wrong people, but you may not have a choice. You may be required to hang out with them because they are co-workers, neighbors, etc. - members of communities to which you may belong but may not have willingly chosen (i.e. if you're lucky enough to have been able to choose your job and your position and the team you work with, you are in a very fortunate minority).

So much of our self worth is wrapped up in "being important" or "being interesting". We don't ask the question enough, "To whom"? As someone else mentioned here, you should be important to the communities you have explicitly chosen and built - your wife and kids, the friends you choose to keep in your life, etc. If they find you interesting and important, that really ought to be enough for just about all of us. I do feel like an awful lot of this pressure to be interesting stems from people who have not cultivated such communities of choice and are left with a dire need to feel important to anyone who will pay attention to them. It's a sickness that I think a lot of people have been able to muster into the wrong kind of attention building, which makes it seems better than it is (e.g. parasocial relationships through social media, etc.)

All of this is to say: Are you happy? Do the people who matter to you find you interesting and fun to be around? Focus on them and be happy. Our lives are enriched by the people we let into them. So long as everyone in our circles are well fed, well loved, and well rested - ourselves included - we can find peace and happiness. Excitement means different things to different people - you'll never catch me bungee jumping, but I get a rush when a delicious meal I had planned turns out exactly as I intended. Find what excites you, surround yourself with people who love and appreciate you - and whom you love and appreciate in return - and work toward your own sense of happiness without the judgement of the chattering classes.