Basically what the title says, two questions:
- Do you feel lonely or socially isolated?
- If you are, what are you trying to change that?
According to the WHO it’s an epidemic,
I’ve been emigrating to different countries about every 15 years and had to rebuild a network of friends from scratch every time. The younger I was the easier it was obviously. But that is a lot of work and you need to invest time and energy which I sometimes don’t have so much, especially now with a small child which needs a lot of attention.
We meet up as a family with other families about once a month and it’s really great, but while my wife keeps in contact with the other mothers in between online, somehow we dads don’t even have a group chat where we would do that and perhaps propose to meet up, it’s always the women who propose it.
It’s kind of weird that its like that and I should change it.
While the WHO doesn’t call it outright an epidemic, it seems they think it’s such a big problem that they created a specific commission to foster social connection: https://www.who.int/news/item/15-11-2023-who-launches-commission-to-foster-social-connection
3 weeks ago I saw a similar discussion so I left a comment inviting people to reach out to me and we can talk or stuff. One person responded who didn’t have a preferred method of communication so I set up a Discord Server. (I would have used element on matrix instead of discord but there are still some features I like that weren’t available).
I try to send a message to them about once a day. Once I have more available time I plan to play some games with them or perhaps get some time in voice calls with people. Almost anybody is free to join in LINK
Interesting, and do you feel it’s working in some way?
It’s enough for me, at least.
True loneliness is when you feel that nobody wants to talk to you.
That’s a really kind thing for you to do.