Twenty-four hours in an invisible epidemic
pudding.cool
pudding.cool
I don't enjoy any of the community or volunteer events in my area (I have tried everything regular, but nothing has stuck). I moved here for work, so I don't have any friends or family support structure in the area. Everyone gets around by car, even though it is extremely walkable here (a personal preference), so I don't even see my neighbors except for when they drive their cars in and out of their driveway.
I know that social isolation is awful for my health. I know that making new friends can be tough at first; you need to hang out with someone enough times in a row to overcome the initial awkwardness and build up mutual understanding. But how the hell am I supposed to meet up with people repeatedly when I have to bend over backwards to fit socialization in between work, feeding myself, exercising, and cleaning (let alone other tasks)? Not to mention that, even working remotely, I'm often so drained after a workday that I don't feel up to socializing.
The only place to 'hang out' in most parts is the library (not conducive to chat) and bars/breweries (expensive, unhealthy, and home to a... certain demographic).
I've heard that other countries supposedly have better work/life balance than the USA. Do folks who have experienced this contrast find it easier to make friends elsewhere?
I try to get my exercise with a group of people friends. Often this isn't possible. But I've got several activities in my life that I do with a group of people and often those people become close friends.
For example, I know many people who are close to those in their yoga group. Or beach volleyball group. I like to hike or do outdoor activities with friends. Basically anything that gets your heart rate up, with a group of people, allows you to build friendship + social connections and not be bored while exercising.
But now that I think about it, that development might not make it to the USA inasmuch as that country wholeheartedly embraced the concept of "no loitering".
This said, it sounds like you've moved somewhere that isn't "you". You can't fix your neighbors insular nature, or their tendency to drive, or the community /volunteer opportunities that don't speak to you. I recommend putting your efforts to finding a place you like, then work on friends there.
P.s., You may not find the friends you expect. Keep an open mind.
I feel like this makes it seem like it's a problem for everyone.
I am alone most of the time and as far as I can tell I have never felt lonely. I am not even quite sure what that feels like, but the descriptions from others make me fairly confident I haven't felt it.
Why does this make it seem like older males who are alone are just sad and sitting at home bored? I know single older males who are very active outdoors and such and they do all sorts of solo activities.
Clearly that isn't you. But this piece isn't making that argument?
But even in this dataset I guess there are outliers who rate themselves 7-8 with 0 social interaction. I guess I would be kind of like one of those data points if I had been in the survey.
Human beings are social animals. Time spent around friends and family is incontrovertibly linked to longer and happier lives.
You should very much understand that you are the exception.
I wish extroverts would stop acting like theirs is the only way of life and having a small group of people to interact with rarely is somehow an issue.
Not to mention all the health issues that come with socialisation, like pandemics.
I don't know if that's true for everyone, but there's certainly a correlation between social time and happiness across the population. I suppose that could mean introverts are just naturally doomed to be miserable—but to me, it seems more likely that even introverts benefit from socializing. Maybe not you, most many if not most.
My whole life feels like an exception lol. But I have to think that I can't possibly be that special or rare and maybe I just am looking in the wrong place when reading about how other people are in comparison to myself.
And in articles about cancer, you also respond "Eh, not everyone has cancer?"
You're being obtuse and/or cruel.
People in the middle tend to sleep, they don't get a lot of interaction, yet they get some interaction. They're kind of in the "not bad / not great".
Some people are super happy, and it seems to be directly correlated to Interaction++. Interaction++ -> Happy++.
Some people are super sad, and it weirdly seems to be directly correlated to Interaction++. And then eventually almost stop interacting. Probably because its always: Interaction++ -> Happy--.
The chart only really works till the middle, like the article's written from an Extrovert's perspective, like most of existence.
It's not just about interaction. It's about meaningful interaction. When you get lots of interaction but none of it meaningful to you, it's just as bad as not getting any at all. The hope of "coming across" something meaningful keeps you going... for while... until it doesn't.
Spending time with people is easy. Making and keeping a real connection, now that's harder.
I'm officially an elementary school teacher as of this fall, so I spend most of my work day "socializing" with other people—they just aren't adults. And they certainly aren't my "friends", although I do genuinely care about them.
I also don't have my own children (yet), which I imagine would be very different.
This is an unusual piece that seems somewhere between digital art and journalism. Honestly I think it's the best presentation of this type of data I've ever seen. Basically it lets you scroll to any point in a 24-hour period and see an animation of what each person was doing at that time. If you want to get more information about that person you can click on their animated icon and see what their entire day looked like
I hate how ableism is so prevalent on the web and amongst engineers. This website is a beautiful way to let users explore the data interactively. There’s absolutely no reason it couldn’t also be made accessible so everyone could appreciate it and explore the timeline of the page and the messages communicated therein.
As nice as the page is, the lack of accessibility comes down to laziness and complacency on the side of the author imo.
Those with more than one disability don't have the right to enjoy art? The right to force you individually to accomodate them in everything you do regardless of if you know them or how few of them there may be?
By your metric there, might I accuse your own post here? You didn't use language that someone sufficiently mentally disabled could understand, so you've just excluded their "right" to appreciate and understand what you've written. Perhaps a limitation of this platform, but it'd sound like you're enabling that same ableism, not to mention that you could attach links to pictograms and videos to try to enable those who cannot understand language.
What is such an accusation of "Ableism"? A denial of differences in ability? A belief that if even one person somewhere can't achieve something, that nobody anywhere should, however mundane?
It's one thing to discuss designing our public streets to accomodate people on wheelchairs, of whom there are many and the benefits can also aid cyclists and even just people wheeling cargo on a dolly. Or to design public buildings to have small accomodations as such where they are trivially inexpensive and will remain for the life of the building while often providing benefits to everyone. Yet should it apply to all aspects of life everywhere? And what defines the limits? Exclusion of 1% of the population? 0.1%? A single individual?
But there's pretty much no human being alive that requires zero social interaction to feel good. And GP's point is that you gotta make friends while you are more able.
You may not be interested now, but the worst case is finding yourself needing a friend and unable to make one.
That may be true, but my threshold seems too low for other people. And it doesn't mean interacting with others helps against feelings of loneliness, usually it won't or even does the opposite. The last person I met who I kinda vibed with expressed interest in living as a hermit, so I guess I'm not gonna be fun at parties very soon.
There is a need to build an environment where people can get together first, before they can make friends.
You really can join a club or meetup or just hang around in the park or a bar and make friends starting now. No need to wait for unplanned, unstarted construction projects to complete first. Good luck, sir.
1) Approximately 0% of my close friends were made in those sort of environments. Not for lack of attempts I might add, but because they are places where it is quite hard to make good friends. Most of the friendships I can think of that other people have weren't made in those sort of environments either. I've made a close friend at a funeral. I've made 0 close friends at social clubs. The friends I had at the social clubs joined because I was a member or vice versa.
2) In a stroke of anecdata, I was talking to a colleague recently who was quitting the club he was member of because he felt the friendships he'd made there were so shallow as to be worthless.
You've already identified that something happens around age 25. That seems a like a bit of a tell to me that there is more to the situation than just awkwardness. It is true that nobody is going to help the lonely because, sort of definitionally, they don't have a strong support network. Therefore they are on their own and will have to figure it out themselves. Joining a bunch of social things certainly should help. Nevertheless it is worth approaching the situation with just a smidgen of empathy and a certain curiosity [0] about what the actual forces at play here are. Slogans like "just be happy", "learn to code" and, I suspect, "just join a club, sir" tend to age poorly.
[0] Not to insinuate that you aren't, but the word count and choice doesn't give me hope that you've really dug in to this topic to make sure there isn't something going on.
Fraternal organizations, adult recreational sports leagues, social dance groups, etc., all exist. You don't have to be a permanent student to have a slice of your time in a not-too-dissimilar social environment.
> There is a need to build an environment where people can get together first, before they can make friends.
There are plenty of such environments. The people that aren't making friends are choosing not to engage with them. In many cases, because they are expending all their social energy on work and transactional relationships around work rather than non-transactional casual interactions on which to grow friendships.