Ask HN: Sources of Community?
Work: there's probably mixed feelings on whether you ought to rely on work for a sense of community. I'm personally very for this, but even when things were "back", they weren't "back" for tech jobs. I work on a team that's mostly west-coast based (I'm east coast), but even if I moved or changed teams or companies, it seems like so many offices still have so many people WFH that it's hard to find a sense of community there.
Hobbies: Spending just a few hours a week on something, I imagine it's pretty hard to form deep connections. There's also the fact that when I'm pursuing a hobby for the sake of community, it's probably not a hobby I was especially interested in or excited about to start with, which further limits how connected I'll feel to the other people partaking. At any rate, for whatever reason, hobbies I've tried to pursue haven't really led to many strong connections at all, let alone a sense of community.
Religion: I wish I were religious, because I do believe this can be a strong source of community too, but I'm not, and I don't think you can really "fake" your way through it.
Family: I'm single, my family is pretty small, and for whatever reason I don't feel especially close to them. We're not especially distant, it's not like things are bad, but for whatever reason the connections there just aren't that strong. (It's somewhere on the list of things to talk about with my therapist...)
School: I've thought of going to grad school as a way to get a sense of community. Even if it were to work, it seems like a steep cost to pay if that's the only reason I'm doing it. And I've had friends that have tried this with middling success: I get the sense people in grad school don't want/try to socialize as much as people in undergrad.
The military/peace corps: I'm more confident this would work than school, but seems like an even larger life disruption. And it also has the downside that the community likely isn't transferrable after/if I leave the military.
Roommates/shared living: The one thing I'm maybe reasonably optimistic about? I'm skeptical of how strong a sense of community it would create, but when my lease is up I definitely want to try to stop living alone. I'd even be open to some kind of commune/hacker-house kind of thing, though I'm not sure how common those are (still are) around where I live.
I know this reads a bit defeatist, but I think I am genuinely trying to look for solutions here. I also realize how "clinical" this can come off as, but I think I need to start being more purposeful and directed about this: 2 years of "just waiting for it to happen" hasn't really worked. Waiting for work to get "back to usual" is what I'm most banking on right now, and I'm not sure when or if that'll happen.