7 ms·

I have been "lonely" most of my life. I have lived in a terrible town growing up where everyone lived on the other side of town. I went to college where nothin

I have been "lonely" most of my life. I have lived in a terrible town growing up where everyone lived on the other side of town. I went to college where nothing was happening and nothing is really interesting and I didn't connect with anyone really. Now, I am reaching 30, and have spent the most of my 20s trying to find a way to move to a place that will make me happy. I'm hoping this will eventually happen, but I have lost a lot of hope. I don't feel connected to humans whatsoever. However, the greatest joy for me is sitting in front of my computer interacting with you folk. I don't get social interaction...

edpichler 10y ago
Man, could I give an advice to you? Don't expect too much from other people, and try you to create "events" and invite some people, with similar interests, to join with you. Don't worry about the "no"s you will receive, pay attention to the "yes". The change start on you. This works for me.
- TheOneTrueKyle 10y ago
  I mean I still try and I give more than I receive for sure, but nothing seems to be working. For the first half of my 20s I didn't leave the house under the assumption that, "if I work hard, I can live where I want to and find a job in a cool place. No reason to make friends now." I have since replaced that assumption, but it's hard to find meaningful relationships in a place you despise.
  - soneca 10y ago
    Do you despise all people living in the place you live now? Take this lightly, but I bet you can find at least one more person that "despises" your place and you can discuss that with them. :)
    - TheOneTrueKyle 10y ago
      I will say that my limited connections comes from mutual hate and not mutual interests. Not sure if that is good or bad.
      - soneca 10y ago
        My (not so limited) connections come from continuously contact, not common interests or hates. Very different, oposing views and values can break a relationship. Very similar views cannot make them - only if this similarity leads to continuous contact. My friends come from: childhood neighboors, two student organizations I was part of and college soccer team. Each of these environments allowed for years long contact with the same people. And from that came friendships. Not from similar anything. Friendships are born from tedious hours of boring conversation with random people that only happened because no one there had nothing else better to do. That comfortable feeling of having a meaningful relationship only comes years after that.
        yomly 10y ago
        Agree with this, circumstance can accelerate this process: sharing some mutual experience like going on a tour or living in a foreign country can leave you making friends with people you would probably never have associated with back home
        karmelapple 10y ago
        As mentioned elsewhere: meetup.com If you live in a community too small to have a meetup, make one yourself and see if anyone attends. I did it, fully expecting not a single person to show up. I met so many people through that, starting in a community of under 70,000 people.
  - snarf21 10y ago
    Are there any meetups in your area or other groups that have weekly/monthly meetings? If not, can I ask where you are located? Also, have you tried volunteering? Or teaching a free class at a library or civic organization? Life (generally) returns what a portion of what you give. If you never put yourself out there, you can't get relationships back in return. I'd focus first on getting new acquaintances, they don't have to be friends. As your circles grow, you will find some number of actual friends.
  - edpichler 10y ago
    For 4 years, at university, I lived surrounded by people I didn't found interesting, and I was pretty sure that I was the problem. Then I changed the city, and found cool people, smart and interesting, I never was so happy. I really hope you do not stop trying, and find your place.
- alashley 10y ago
  > Don't expect too much from other people I think you have to at least "expect" things to change for the better socially. Maybe its just a matter of finding the right people where you can set expectations of each other? There will be times when the expectations cannot be met, but respect and communication help with that. Maybe this view is too idealistic :/
  - edpichler 10y ago
    Sorry, I tried to mean, don't expect people will "love" you easily or for few reasons. Don't do good things to people expecting they will do the same to you, just do.
gragas 10y ago
>However, the greatest joy for me is sitting in front of my computer interacting with you folk. That sounds like my version of hell. I think the best thing you can do is ask people to do things with you. Many will say no, but that's okay. Eventually you'll make friends.
no_wizard 10y ago
I feel the exact same way. It's quite strange. I find I can't connect with others either. In my job I appear to be quite social and pass largely as someone who is considered nice and socially adept...not that I'm not a nice person I just mean nice in the sense of being easy to get along with and "understanding" people but unless I have a given context for interacting with someone (like...work) I've been deemed 'too intense' to be around for a long time in my life. I can't just turn 'me' off so I often find it hard to make friends. I'm lucky that I met my wife because she's very understanding of my peculiarities. If it want for her I wouldn't have a lot of social interactions outside work at all. i feel you man, I feel you
ArkyBeagle 10y ago
I hear you. Be happy where you are. It's essentially a form of self-delusion. And I DARE you to watch Ren & Stimpy's "Stimpy's Invention[1]" and not be happy, at least for a little while. [1] in which Stimpy invents "The Happy Helmet" and Ren is his ... involuntary happiness subject. And yes - it's on YouTube. "I don't think you're happy enough! That's right! I'll teach you to be happy! I'll teach your grandmother to suck eggs!"
- TheOneTrueKyle 10y ago
  Haha this is so funny as I found myself singing "happy happy joy joy" earlier today.
  - turc1656 10y ago
    Now I have the Dog Pound Hop (the intro song) stuck in my head. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVRJ8TiicM4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVRJ8TiicM4 Love that rockabilly beat. Can't be sad when listening to that.
    - stephancoral 10y ago
      For music along similar lines, check out Wes Montgomery https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nU3OwXyL5R8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nU3OwXyL5R8
Broken_Hippo 10y ago
I used to feel this way, and occasionally still do, but it is no longer the pervasive norm. I still don't connect to most folks, but that's ok. I found a few. But I also moved countries, so the stakes changed and so did my relationship with the world around me. Best thing I've ever done.
okreallywtf 10y ago
TLDR - Stop worrying about finding the perfect place and try to get the best out of what is around you. Find a local volunteer opportunity that will force you to interact with random people and other volunteers (volunteermatch.org is not a bad choice). Just pick something and do it immediately, you may find better/different connections than you would with friends (I have at least). Long version: I have a couple recommendations that could help you to connect with people better if you can take a couple minutes to read this, its a little longer than I would like but I really think that you can turn things around. I am by no means an expert and I have struggled with isolation myself at other times in my life, but I do feel like I have made some small improvements so my guess is you could to. First off, while I think a location can be either conducive or adverse to the type of lifestyle you would like, I think a big part of how well or poorly you fit into a place is on you - you get out of it what you put into it (or something like that). That sucks to hear and you probably already know it and I think it is the truth. The only reason I say that is to caution you to not overlook what might be around you already. That being said, I have a buddy who I feel like was in a similar situation until he picked up and move to Portland kind of on a whim (after doing similar things with other places) and this time it worked out for him (so far), but he probably had to be ready and open to good things happening or else it would have been like it had been before in other places. More importantly, I think it is way easier to connect with people outside of what we typically think of as "social" situations. I've never liked going to bars to meet people or any kind of mixer situation although these days I'm much better at it. What really did it for me was to go way out of my comfort zone and do volunteer activities that forced me to do things I really didn't feel like doing but I kind of put myself in a situation that made it hard to give into my desire to bail. The main one for me was political volunteering, starting during the primaries of this year and going into the general election. The outcome was devastating but the process and the changes I felt were pretty amazing. The actual work required connecting with total strangers in situations where I otherwise never would have: registering people to vote (talking to people on the street, going to large festivals and walking around and talking to strangers), going door to door to talk to people (mostly giving information but also trying to convince people to vote and giving them my personal opinions), and phone banking (talking to random strangers who were mostly in my city but who I would never likely meet). All these things were really uncomfortable at first but once I met the organizers involved and got excited by their excitement and passion I would sign up for something and then it was like "well, guess I gotta do it". Lock yourself into something that can't really hurt you but that pushes you outside your comfort zone. After doing all of that, at 30 years old I felt like I had kind of finally figured out how to be a part of my own environment (as opposed to a mindless drone only focused on going from A->B). I haven't found my "next thing" yet, but since then I've found many social situations to be easier than they used to be, even something as stupid as buying a car was 10x less stressful than it used to be for me (and I got a couple grand better of a deal than I usually would have). Once you get over knocking on the door of a strangers house and realizing that a) most people are actually pretty cool and b) the vast majority of the time you are going to be totally fine no matter what, a lot of other things feel like a cakewalk. I met more new people in 6 months than in the prior 6 years and since we were all going to a similar stressful time, connecting was easy for once (even though aside from politics personality wise nobody was that similar to me). All that to say this: forget (or at least, demphasize) the typical social stuff and find a cause that you can get on board with, just pull the trigger and show up and say "what can I do?". Don't spend ages shopping around for something to do (I've done that, I had no less than 60 bookmarks from a volunteermatch.org at one point before this, never did a single one of them), look around in your area (volunteermatch.org is not bad if you don't abuse it like I did), find anything that will involve working with other people you don't know (both other volunteers and strangers ideally, which is a lot of things) and just sign yourself up and do it. In my experience once you are actually there, nature kind of takes its course. I may be lucky in that but my problem has largely been hesitation. If you are male you will find in a lot of volunteer situations that you will be one of the few men and your contributions will be appreciated if you don't hold back and give it your best shot. You won't have to deal with the weirdness of finding a like-minded social group to fit into and honestly, I enjoyed the interactions I had more than I usually would have in a purely social environment (sometimes working towards a common goal that isn't job is more fun than just hanging out). I know this was long as hell but your comment got the juices flowing, sorry if it was a slog but I've had my perception change quite a lot over the last year (in some ways at least) and I would like to think that other people can have a similar experience.
Tsagadai 10y ago
I used to be like you. I am high functioning autistic so social interaction is mentally very hard for me and I feel completely drained after talking to people for an extended period of time. That said, I am now quite extroverted, especially when intoxicated. Making friends is hard. I am a lot more social than I used to be now but I have a wide and shallow list of people I get along with. I don't feel there is anyone I am actually close to (other than my wife and kids). So don't take my advice too closely because I am definitely not a model for socialisation, I spend most of my free time child raising and studying. If I can give one piece of advice it is that you should get involved in some activities. Be it sports, gaming, joining a hackerspace, whatever it really doesn't matter what it is as long as there is some level of complexity that keeps people hooked and enough to keep you interested as well. You will find that in situations of mutual difficulty you find the people you actually like and the people who actually like you. As long as you aren't a completely antisocial arsehole you should develop a connection to someone eventually if you just throw yourself into it. Listen to people when they talk, almost everyone has some interesting story lurking away inside them. Even if you don't like them at all you can at least be entertained by the occasional anecdote or bizarre circumstance. The important thing is to try and you might surprise yourself.
- selestify 10y ago
  As somebody else on the spectrum, how did you get to understand dating? I find that I miss so many cues, and there's a lot about human interactions that I don't understand.
  - woogiewonka 10y ago
    If you are a guy, you're not alone. We just generally suck at cues. Ya gotta get lucky and find someone to spell it out for you. At least that's how I met my wife.
    - 2muchcoffeeman 10y ago
      Shit. The older I get the more I realise I may have missed or misinterpreted cues. I've started wondering if I am on the spectrum.
BurningFrog 10y ago
> move to a place that will make me happy I'm sorry, but that is not how it works. You are what's making you unhappy, and that's what you have to change. The good thing is you have plenty of free time to do it in, and all the power to do it.
- 55555 10y ago
  Unfortunately, as someone who has lived in many, many places, this is true. People are socializing everywhere and if you're lonely where you are, you will probably be lonely anywhere. Unless you're flamboyantly gay in Aleppo, or something, moving probably won't affect your ability to socialize too much.
  - crucini 10y ago
    However. I've found there is a period of increased energy upon moving to a new city. During this period, I am more open and alert, more willing to start conversations that may not end well. When you live in a place for years, a mental cocoon forms that blocks out most of the stimuli.
archagon 10y ago
I'm the same, except I actually found such a place: a 38-person student cooperative during my last year of college. I'm convinced living in a creaky old house with a varied cast of characters is the way to go for a happy and socially fulfilling life. College is almost a decade behind me, but I hope to find such a place again before I turn 30. (And one that's hopefully not 100% filled with startup folks... we need artists, writers, researchers, educators, and everything else -- not just programmers.)
- Tsugumo 10y ago
  Yes, I completely agree. The difficulty is finding the right people. And I don't think of this as being exactly the same as co-living or other movements. I'm not sure what to call it...but it requires a certain mindset...or maybe we're thinking of different setups. The "creaky old house" says a lot about the character of the people; I don't think that's a small detail--not that it would have to be a creaky old house, but that the occupants wouldn't mind that. Because for the living conditions there is a priority above materialism...
  - archagon 10y ago
    One thing I really loved about our house is that it bore the scars of many past generations. Odd wiring... staircases leading to nowhere... strange wooden fixtures holding things up... handmade room extensions. The house had its own eccentric character, shaped by the people who lived in it.
woogiewonka 10y ago
Hey, welcome to the club! I loved reading your comment and feel more connected now. Ah, the social webs of hacker news, can't beat it. Except I say stupid shit sometimes and get downvoted to oblivion. Let me tell you something... There is no place you can move to cure what you have. Sorry.
- mike_h 10y ago
  Going to encouragingly dispute that. Tech hubs are full of people who came out of just this situation and are ecstatic at having found a like-minded community. You may not suddenly be a social butterfly, but the chances of making friends and finding meetups you enjoy etc go up by literal orders of magnitude. If you're an isolated computer type, you owe it to yourself to at least visit a place like this for a weekend and schedule some meetups or job interviews etc to see what life could be like.
peter303 10y ago
At age 30 most people are strong and healthy. That is huge asset. When you get older like 60 or 70 you may start losing these and needvto depend on others whether friends or government. Young people feel invincible, read some of these nebulous self help articles and believe they will never become dependent. Well we have news for you - life is not always roses.
- TheOneTrueKyle 10y ago
  What?

edpichler 10y ago

Man, could I give an advice to you? Don't expect too much from other people, and try you to create "events" and invite some people, with similar interests, to join with you. Don't worry about the "no"s you will receive, pay attention to the "yes". The change start on you. This works for me.

TheOneTrueKyle 10y ago
I mean I still try and I give more than I receive for sure, but nothing seems to be working. For the first half of my 20s I didn't leave the house under the assumption that, "if I work hard, I can live where I want to and find a job in a cool place. No reason to make friends now." I have since replaced that assumption, but it's hard to find meaningful relationships in a place you despise.
- soneca 10y ago
  Do you despise all people living in the place you live now? Take this lightly, but I bet you can find at least one more person that "despises" your place and you can discuss that with them. :)
  - TheOneTrueKyle 10y ago
    I will say that my limited connections comes from mutual hate and not mutual interests. Not sure if that is good or bad.
    - soneca 10y ago
      My (not so limited) connections come from continuously contact, not common interests or hates. Very different, oposing views and values can break a relationship. Very similar views cannot make them - only if this similarity leads to continuous contact. My friends come from: childhood neighboors, two student organizations I was part of and college soccer team. Each of these environments allowed for years long contact with the same people. And from that came friendships. Not from similar anything. Friendships are born from tedious hours of boring conversation with random people that only happened because no one there had nothing else better to do. That comfortable feeling of having a meaningful relationship only comes years after that.
      - yomly 10y ago
        Agree with this, circumstance can accelerate this process: sharing some mutual experience like going on a tour or living in a foreign country can leave you making friends with people you would probably never have associated with back home
        karmelapple 10y ago
        As mentioned elsewhere: meetup.com If you live in a community too small to have a meetup, make one yourself and see if anyone attends. I did it, fully expecting not a single person to show up. I met so many people through that, starting in a community of under 70,000 people.
- snarf21 10y ago
  Are there any meetups in your area or other groups that have weekly/monthly meetings? If not, can I ask where you are located? Also, have you tried volunteering? Or teaching a free class at a library or civic organization? Life (generally) returns what a portion of what you give. If you never put yourself out there, you can't get relationships back in return. I'd focus first on getting new acquaintances, they don't have to be friends. As your circles grow, you will find some number of actual friends.
- edpichler 10y ago
  For 4 years, at university, I lived surrounded by people I didn't found interesting, and I was pretty sure that I was the problem. Then I changed the city, and found cool people, smart and interesting, I never was so happy. I really hope you do not stop trying, and find your place.
alashley 10y ago
> Don't expect too much from other people I think you have to at least "expect" things to change for the better socially. Maybe its just a matter of finding the right people where you can set expectations of each other? There will be times when the expectations cannot be met, but respect and communication help with that. Maybe this view is too idealistic :/
- edpichler 10y ago
  Sorry, I tried to mean, don't expect people will "love" you easily or for few reasons. Don't do good things to people expecting they will do the same to you, just do.

gragas 10y ago

>However, the greatest joy for me is sitting in front of my computer interacting with you folk. That sounds like my version of hell. I think the best thing you can do is ask people to do things with you. Many will say no, but that's okay. Eventually you'll make friends.

no_wizard 10y ago

I feel the exact same way. It's quite strange. I find I can't connect with others either. In my job I appear to be quite social and pass largely as someone who is considered nice and socially adept...not that I'm not a nice person I just mean nice in the sense of being easy to get along with and "understanding" people but unless I have a given context for interacting with someone (like...work) I've been deemed 'too intense' to be around for a long time in my life. I can't just turn 'me' off so I often find it hard to make friends. I'm lucky that I met my wife because she's very understanding of my peculiarities. If it want for her I wouldn't have a lot of social interactions outside work at all. i feel you man, I feel you

ArkyBeagle 10y ago

I hear you. Be happy where you are. It's essentially a form of self-delusion. And I DARE you to watch Ren & Stimpy's "Stimpy's Invention[1]" and not be happy, at least for a little while. [1] in which Stimpy invents "The Happy Helmet" and Ren is his ... involuntary happiness subject. And yes - it's on YouTube. "I don't think you're happy enough! That's right! I'll teach you to be happy! I'll teach your grandmother to suck eggs!"

TheOneTrueKyle 10y ago
Haha this is so funny as I found myself singing "happy happy joy joy" earlier today.
- turc1656 10y ago
  Now I have the Dog Pound Hop (the intro song) stuck in my head. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVRJ8TiicM4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVRJ8TiicM4 Love that rockabilly beat. Can't be sad when listening to that.
  - stephancoral 10y ago
    For music along similar lines, check out Wes Montgomery https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nU3OwXyL5R8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nU3OwXyL5R8

Broken_Hippo 10y ago

I used to feel this way, and occasionally still do, but it is no longer the pervasive norm. I still don't connect to most folks, but that's ok. I found a few. But I also moved countries, so the stakes changed and so did my relationship with the world around me. Best thing I've ever done.

okreallywtf 10y ago

TLDR - Stop worrying about finding the perfect place and try to get the best out of what is around you. Find a local volunteer opportunity that will force you to interact with random people and other volunteers (volunteermatch.org is not a bad choice). Just pick something and do it immediately, you may find better/different connections than you would with friends (I have at least). Long version: I have a couple recommendations that could help you to connect with people better if you can take a couple minutes to read this, its a little longer than I would like but I really think that you can turn things around. I am by no means an expert and I have struggled with isolation myself at other times in my life, but I do feel like I have made some small improvements so my guess is you could to. First off, while I think a location can be either conducive or adverse to the type of lifestyle you would like, I think a big part of how well or poorly you fit into a place is on you - you get out of it what you put into it (or something like that). That sucks to hear and you probably already know it and I think it is the truth. The only reason I say that is to caution you to not overlook what might be around you already. That being said, I have a buddy who I feel like was in a similar situation until he picked up and move to Portland kind of on a whim (after doing similar things with other places) and this time it worked out for him (so far), but he probably had to be ready and open to good things happening or else it would have been like it had been before in other places. More importantly, I think it is way easier to connect with people outside of what we typically think of as "social" situations. I've never liked going to bars to meet people or any kind of mixer situation although these days I'm much better at it. What really did it for me was to go way out of my comfort zone and do volunteer activities that forced me to do things I really didn't feel like doing but I kind of put myself in a situation that made it hard to give into my desire to bail. The main one for me was political volunteering, starting during the primaries of this year and going into the general election. The outcome was devastating but the process and the changes I felt were pretty amazing. The actual work required connecting with total strangers in situations where I otherwise never would have: registering people to vote (talking to people on the street, going to large festivals and walking around and talking to strangers), going door to door to talk to people (mostly giving information but also trying to convince people to vote and giving them my personal opinions), and phone banking (talking to random strangers who were mostly in my city but who I would never likely meet). All these things were really uncomfortable at first but once I met the organizers involved and got excited by their excitement and passion I would sign up for something and then it was like "well, guess I gotta do it". Lock yourself into something that can't really hurt you but that pushes you outside your comfort zone. After doing all of that, at 30 years old I felt like I had kind of finally figured out how to be a part of my own environment (as opposed to a mindless drone only focused on going from A->B). I haven't found my "next thing" yet, but since then I've found many social situations to be easier than they used to be, even something as stupid as buying a car was 10x less stressful than it used to be for me (and I got a couple grand better of a deal than I usually would have). Once you get over knocking on the door of a strangers house and realizing that a) most people are actually pretty cool and b) the vast majority of the time you are going to be totally fine no matter what, a lot of other things feel like a cakewalk. I met more new people in 6 months than in the prior 6 years and since we were all going to a similar stressful time, connecting was easy for once (even though aside from politics personality wise nobody was that similar to me). All that to say this: forget (or at least, demphasize) the typical social stuff and find a cause that you can get on board with, just pull the trigger and show up and say "what can I do?". Don't spend ages shopping around for something to do (I've done that, I had no less than 60 bookmarks from a volunteermatch.org at one point before this, never did a single one of them), look around in your area (volunteermatch.org is not bad if you don't abuse it like I did), find anything that will involve working with other people you don't know (both other volunteers and strangers ideally, which is a lot of things) and just sign yourself up and do it. In my experience once you are actually there, nature kind of takes its course. I may be lucky in that but my problem has largely been hesitation. If you are male you will find in a lot of volunteer situations that you will be one of the few men and your contributions will be appreciated if you don't hold back and give it your best shot. You won't have to deal with the weirdness of finding a like-minded social group to fit into and honestly, I enjoyed the interactions I had more than I usually would have in a purely social environment (sometimes working towards a common goal that isn't job is more fun than just hanging out). I know this was long as hell but your comment got the juices flowing, sorry if it was a slog but I've had my perception change quite a lot over the last year (in some ways at least) and I would like to think that other people can have a similar experience.

Tsagadai 10y ago

I used to be like you. I am high functioning autistic so social interaction is mentally very hard for me and I feel completely drained after talking to people for an extended period of time. That said, I am now quite extroverted, especially when intoxicated. Making friends is hard. I am a lot more social than I used to be now but I have a wide and shallow list of people I get along with. I don't feel there is anyone I am actually close to (other than my wife and kids). So don't take my advice too closely because I am definitely not a model for socialisation, I spend most of my free time child raising and studying. If I can give one piece of advice it is that you should get involved in some activities. Be it sports, gaming, joining a hackerspace, whatever it really doesn't matter what it is as long as there is some level of complexity that keeps people hooked and enough to keep you interested as well. You will find that in situations of mutual difficulty you find the people you actually like and the people who actually like you. As long as you aren't a completely antisocial arsehole you should develop a connection to someone eventually if you just throw yourself into it. Listen to people when they talk, almost everyone has some interesting story lurking away inside them. Even if you don't like them at all you can at least be entertained by the occasional anecdote or bizarre circumstance. The important thing is to try and you might surprise yourself.

selestify 10y ago
As somebody else on the spectrum, how did you get to understand dating? I find that I miss so many cues, and there's a lot about human interactions that I don't understand.
- woogiewonka 10y ago
  If you are a guy, you're not alone. We just generally suck at cues. Ya gotta get lucky and find someone to spell it out for you. At least that's how I met my wife.
  - 2muchcoffeeman 10y ago
    Shit. The older I get the more I realise I may have missed or misinterpreted cues. I've started wondering if I am on the spectrum.

BurningFrog 10y ago

> move to a place that will make me happy I'm sorry, but that is not how it works. You are what's making you unhappy, and that's what you have to change. The good thing is you have plenty of free time to do it in, and all the power to do it.

55555 10y ago
Unfortunately, as someone who has lived in many, many places, this is true. People are socializing everywhere and if you're lonely where you are, you will probably be lonely anywhere. Unless you're flamboyantly gay in Aleppo, or something, moving probably won't affect your ability to socialize too much.
- crucini 10y ago
  However. I've found there is a period of increased energy upon moving to a new city. During this period, I am more open and alert, more willing to start conversations that may not end well. When you live in a place for years, a mental cocoon forms that blocks out most of the stimuli.

archagon 10y ago

I'm the same, except I actually found such a place: a 38-person student cooperative during my last year of college. I'm convinced living in a creaky old house with a varied cast of characters is the way to go for a happy and socially fulfilling life. College is almost a decade behind me, but I hope to find such a place again before I turn 30. (And one that's hopefully not 100% filled with startup folks... we need artists, writers, researchers, educators, and everything else -- not just programmers.)

Tsugumo 10y ago
Yes, I completely agree. The difficulty is finding the right people. And I don't think of this as being exactly the same as co-living or other movements. I'm not sure what to call it...but it requires a certain mindset...or maybe we're thinking of different setups. The "creaky old house" says a lot about the character of the people; I don't think that's a small detail--not that it would have to be a creaky old house, but that the occupants wouldn't mind that. Because for the living conditions there is a priority above materialism...
- archagon 10y ago
  One thing I really loved about our house is that it bore the scars of many past generations. Odd wiring... staircases leading to nowhere... strange wooden fixtures holding things up... handmade room extensions. The house had its own eccentric character, shaped by the people who lived in it.

woogiewonka 10y ago

Hey, welcome to the club! I loved reading your comment and feel more connected now. Ah, the social webs of hacker news, can't beat it. Except I say stupid shit sometimes and get downvoted to oblivion. Let me tell you something... There is no place you can move to cure what you have. Sorry.

mike_h 10y ago
Going to encouragingly dispute that. Tech hubs are full of people who came out of just this situation and are ecstatic at having found a like-minded community. You may not suddenly be a social butterfly, but the chances of making friends and finding meetups you enjoy etc go up by literal orders of magnitude. If you're an isolated computer type, you owe it to yourself to at least visit a place like this for a weekend and schedule some meetups or job interviews etc to see what life could be like.

peter303 10y ago

At age 30 most people are strong and healthy. That is huge asset. When you get older like 60 or 70 you may start losing these and needvto depend on others whether friends or government. Young people feel invincible, read some of these nebulous self help articles and believe they will never become dependent. Well we have news for you - life is not always roses.

TheOneTrueKyle 10y ago
What?