I talk to my kid about this. He's only turning 10 this year but he has solidly intellectual interests. His problem is all the little classmates are into footbal

I talk to my kid about this. He's only turning 10 this year but he has solidly intellectual interests. His problem is all the little classmates are into football, and he isn't. I've told him he simply needs to wait for his friends to grow up. When I was his age, it was not apparent which of my classmates was going to interested in nerd stuff either. It's a thing to wait for, and you're lucky to find one or two other people who are actually into things. I had a lot of friends growing up, but only a small group who were into the same interests. Here's the thing though. If your interests are intellectual, you can turn almost anything in that direction. You don't know it yet when you're a child, but just about every interesting thing in the world can be viewed with an intellectual lens. For instance football and sports in general. The variety of data is so large that people who manage sports teams analyse numbers to decide who the put on the field and how to play them. I have a friend who uses this kind of data to make money, despite him having zero interest in those sports. Sports data talk is also something that makes your input to discussions a bit less tired than the usual tropes people put out. Business is another one of those topics where being a bit analytical and opening your eyes creates interesting conversations. Finally, if people just don't want to think, they want to feel. Everyone has an emotional life and often at parties that's what they want to exercise. Get used to talking about ordinary things about life. Family, work, relationships. This is just surface scratching in many ways. You kinda need someone's bio to get an idea of what they care about, so get used to giving your own spiel and listening to others.