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Comment by VyseofArcadia | Hacker News Reader

> When I talk to young people who live in some generic suburb I can't help but feel depressed.

On the other hand, I grew up and spent about the first two-thirds of my life in an extremely rural area. Socializing happened only at school, and when your nearest friends are a thirty minute drive away, you learn to effectively spend time alone.

I read, I wandered through the woods, I played video games. Activities I still enjoy.

It was nice spending my 20s a few minutes walk from my friends, restaurants, my office, etc, but it certainly got overwhelming. People were inviting me to do stuff nearly every night. I frequently wondered if people just live like that and when they found the time to just do normal alone stuff.

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Having grown up in a rural area, I share your experience. I'm very comfortable being by myself and get drained when I have to socialize. I honestly feel pretty lucky to be this way. Most people get incredibly stressed when they have to be alone. Finding joy with yourself leads to a pretty high quality of life imho.

I quite enjoyed my rural upbringing, but there was a massive lack of specific stuff to do. Like, I wanted to do martial arts for ages as a kid, and I had zero options. Not a single club within an hours drive. That was real annoying.

So I moved to London, and damn I'm glad I did.

> but it certainly got overwhelming. People were inviting me to do stuff nearly every night. I frequently wondered if people just live like that and when they found the time to just do normal alone stuff.

The realization that helped me here is that people don’t think about you as much as you think they do.

So, for example, if you ignore most events, and just join these events once every few weeks, it’s not like people will think any less of you.

I decided to skip a lot more of these events and instead meet smaller groups of friends for last moment smaller hang outs instead. Maybe just grab a 30 min walk after work or grab a coffee or a couple of drinks a weekend morning.

I would not go that far. If you repeatedly turn down a friend you won't get invited any more.

If meeting up with a friend every few weeks instead of nightly means you no longer want anything to do with that person, I doubt the friendship was that strong to begin with.

Also, there's a difference between having a friend turn down a one to one meetup versus turning down a party of 30 people, 20 of whom they don't really know.

The other thing to remember is that if YOU do an event, and invite 10 people, that is ten invites. Everyone will receive more invites than they can accept, it's normal.

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