And, should I change?
I’m 38 years old, single, not interested in starting a family (my mother was a drama queen and I couldn’t live that again with a partner or a child), don’t own any property, not really a consumerist person, I max my 401k and save 70% of my net income because most of the stuff society tells me to buy is irrelevant to me (I still own clothes I bought 20 years ago and they still fit me), don’t need a car and use a bike or public transportation, I prefer to cook at home because it’s cheaper and I can choose what I cook. I stopped drinking alcohol 10 years ago. I’m definitively not an extrovert.
I majored in philosophy because I liked it and I still do, but never found a job with my major. I tried being a high school teacher, but teenagers are way too much for me. Nursing, what I do now, is a versatile and safer job, even if I think it’s slowly killing me.
I feel cheated in life.
For 15 years I lived paycheck to paycheck paying off my debt, often having to move due to increased rent so this might be my way of coping with trauma. I still feel I’m way behind most people my age. I feel like a loser because I imagine them knowing better than me what they want in life.
It’s true that comparison is the thief of joy, but I cannot stop ruminating about this.
If you read my post history you’ll realize I don’t really care about my job, but stay because I need a paycheck and I like having a big rainy day fund. If I was a millionaire, I’d stop working. I don’t like any job.
It might be true that I’m autistic, because close human connections where never that important to me and most people I work with are not close to me, but as I’m nearing 40 I’m starting to think if my destiny is going to be to live and die alone in a nursing home. Sometimes this scares me, but I always go back to my apathetic, indifferent self, like I’m on some kind of drug that makes me not feel anything, neither good or bad, like my emotional brain is underdeveloped.
What I don’t want to be is this desperate loner craving for any kind of human attention turning to post his whole life online hoping a good Samaritan comes and saves me. First because it’s pathetic and secondly because that’s never a good foundation to build a friendship, I’d be inviting a predator, another crazy loner, a newborn Christian to save me with god, somebody trying to scam me with a MLM scheme or an antivaxer into my life. And I’m not a 20 year old discovering the world, I’m almost 40.
Every woman I’ve been attracted to has ignored me and every woman that showed an interest in me wasn’t good enough to me: she could be eager to make a connection, put an interest, even pretty and genuine but I cannot fake being in love or feeling attraction. I always ended up considering them as friends or acquaintances. I’m too old and too introverted (autistic?) to visit a club and try to impress a woman to go out with me.
I don’t think this is depression, depression would be me not going to work not even calling in sick.
It seems clear I need a friend, but I don’t know how to make friends anymore. I focused so much on surviving that I stopped caring about anyone else.
Purpose isn’t something that is handed to you, it’s something that each of us has to find/create for ourselves.
And true happiness isn’t found by comparing yourself to others.
Its not a fair comparison. You only get to see their directors cut, but you see your own blooper reel.
Do we do that here? Do we make friends on this platform?
My advice is to enroll in a community college acting class and really throw yourself into it. Worked wonders for me, in fact it turned my whole life around. I didn’t become a professional actor but it changed how I look at everything. Take job interviews - I reframed them as not being job interviews, I already work there, I’ve been away on a sabbatical or something and it’s my first day back. Think how great it will be to see everybody again! It’s a fantastic group, we all like each other, the manager is awesome… so I get into that character and when I walk in I’m genuinely glad to be there and everybody feels it - not the formal politeness of a typical super-nervous applicant, instant comfort level and 100% culture fit. There are lots more ways acting experience benefited me - one was the almost instant social life. Rehearsals, going out for pizza, cast parties, other parties, dating - theatre women are a blast, and tbh a straight guy doing theatre is golden. I went from overanxious introverted computer nerd to sociable, confident, dare-I-say Man About Town, puttin’ on the Ritz.
edit: regarding age - I started in my late 20s but late 30s is totally fine. Most of the students were early 20s, people who had gone to work right after high school for a few years and had gone back to school. But there were people older than myself. There may or may not be people there your age in a particular class, but it doesn’t matter. When you’re doing a character you aren’t who you are anyway. So don’t let that hold you back.
First:
No, you don’t need a purpose, and your lifestyle sounds ok, if you were enjoying it (I think plenty of people would) but a couple of things stick out to me. One, you are avoiding romantic attachment - if any women are attracted to you, you are not unattractive or too awkward or whatever - you are really not attracted to any women who find you attractive? Or your brain rejects them because you subconsciously think you cannot possibly be attractive so there has to be something wrong with them?
Two, you do honestly sound depressed. It doesn’t have to mean so catatonic you can’t make it to work, it can mean going through the motions of life without feeling anything.
Do you have any hobbies, no matter how obscure? That’s often a great gateway to meet people with a shared interest. If you don’t have one, look for nearby homeless shelters / churches. They often have volunteer programs where you can do anything from feeding the homeless, to helping pick up trash, etc. This work tends to be very fulfilling because you can cause a positive impact in the area that you live in. You will probably also meet a person or two while doing this.
People love to talk about themselves, so if you do manage to chat someone up at one of these events, ask them about their life. Try to steer the questions towards one that don’t have a yes/no answer, and keep engaging them and asking follow up questions. Making acquaintances is basically as easy as that. Do that long enough and you’ll have more than one friend.
TLDR: Find people with shared interests; engage them in conversation. Repeat until friend[s] acquired. Easy as that.
