Basically what the title says, two questions:
- Do you feel lonely or socially isolated?
- If you are, what are you trying to change that?
According to the WHO it’s an epidemic,
I’ve been emigrating to different countries about every 15 years and had to rebuild a network of friends from scratch every time. The younger I was the easier it was obviously. But that is a lot of work and you need to invest time and energy which I sometimes don’t have so much, especially now with a small child which needs a lot of attention.
We meet up as a family with other families about once a month and it’s really great, but while my wife keeps in contact with the other mothers in between online, somehow we dads don’t even have a group chat where we would do that and perhaps propose to meet up, it’s always the women who propose it.
It’s kind of weird that its like that and I should change it.
While the WHO doesn’t call it outright an epidemic, it seems they think it’s such a big problem that they created a specific commission to foster social connection: https://www.who.int/news/item/15-11-2023-who-launches-commission-to-foster-social-connection
Yeah, I am. Unfortunately both in terms of regular social contact and in terms of romance.
Social contact because I’m not awake during the day, which makes it really hard to get together with people, or get out of the house (or see the sun). And romantically just cause I’m not healthy enough for it and so not pursuing a relationship, even though I miss it.
I go to a regular social event once a week on Mondays and try to keep up with my friends. I’m still trying to figure out what I might want to change. Going to more social stuff, even though I find it a bit overwhelming? Getting a job would certainly help. Once I have a job, maybe I could get a dog? It’d be nice to get to interact with another living creature in my physical vacinity at least once a day.
I’ve kinda thought about trying to do small group get-togethers with my friends. I used to really enjoy doing a regular movie night. Or perhaps try to do something for my birthday. I’ve even thought about trying to start a group of some kind for folks awake at night since it can make socializing and getting out pretty hard
Ah so you’re not doing night shift at work or something so you’re asleep during the day. What’s the reason you’re not awake during the day? Wouldn’t that be a good first step to synchronize the time you’re awake with others?
A couple of years ago I worked from home during summer leave from university and slowly shifted to night work and day sleep. That had the same effect as for you, totally out of sync with everyone so I couldn’t meet with anyone, couldn’t call anyone, etc. I was so happy that summer leave was over and I was forced to sync up with the rest of the country and meet everyone again.
Oh, back in Sweden I also had regular movie nights with two or three friends. What was cool and made it less awkward was that we restricted it to only old classic movies from before 2000. That way we could say we’re very sophisticated movie enthusiasts and we also learned a lot about classic movies which none of us would usually watch ourselves at home. That was great fun.
I have a severe circadian rhythm disorder (combined with a handful of complicating mental health conditions) and unfortunately can’t be awake during the day 😅
if I manage to move my schedule it just drifts back to being extremely late, and when I’ve had jobs I’ve progressively found it harder and harder to be awake when work starts, or when I was in highschool, struggled more and more to get up for school until I was just missing school a lot of the time (though that was also in part because I was going through the first real mental health episode I’ve experienced and didn’t know what to do about it or how to cope)
The not working is mostly due to social anxiety and mental health hurdles with applying and interviewing, but I do think that’s changing. I’ve been kinda stuck for a while though.
A friend group of mine who all rented a house together used to do movie nights and I really enjoyed it :) we all took turns picking stuff and I haven’t seen almost any movies so I had a great time. Unfortunately they don’t live together anymore and some moved away. That friend group is a lot more split up a now, so I was thinking about stating a new one :)
Edit: lmao, who downvoted me for explaining my medical condition, what a dick