I'm talking to an online friend who is in his upper 30s. He's telling me about his friends with kids, how he's an uncle figure to them, and how he cooks with their parents. He told me about a lot of people he knows.
I'm a little jealous, his stories are warming my heart a little. I'm having a hard time finding and maintaining a community like this.
I have friends but they're all separate from each other. I rarely see them because I'm always exhausted from working 12 hour nighshifts and doing school and life maintenance on top.
My life feels kind of insular, and the answer is to fix this by finding a community, but I feel I can't even cultivate new connections into something sustainable because I'm always made tired. I found a board game group, but they host their events in an area of the city that takes me an hour at least to reach by public transportation. By the time I arrive, they've almost wrapped up.
I lose friendships because I have a hard time maintaining them, again because of tiredness, schedule, and distance. But often these friendships that I let slip don't fulfill me either, and I feel guilty because I do feel responsible to everyone I ever meet.
Most of my social life is online and that doesn't really cut it anymore. Generally, the internet is full of characters that aren't really a representation of how people are in person. I miss the authenticity and groundedness of in-person connection.
I'm my own roadblock in this because these things can be changed, but finding a community that I feel connected to is also another challenge. Generally I give a lot of myself to other people but I fear I couldn't ask for support from them. There's also a feeling of otherness I have in groups.
It's either being social and exhausted, or being lonely at this point. (Even in loneliness I'm still exhausted but that's neither here or there.)
Whenever I go out to be social and exhausted, it ends up showing to have diminishing returns. I feel a bit stuck.