Let me start this by saying something important, I’m not actually lonely. I have a great family, good friends that I see semi-regularly, and work colleagues I get on well with. In technical terms I’m not alone. I get adequate amounts of social interaction. This article isn’t a criticism of the people in my life or a problem for them to solve. But still… I feel lonely a lot of the time and I think I should talk about it.
It’s strange talking about loneliness. As someone who tends towards being introverted, I’m quite happy spending time alone. Especially when I’ve spent a lot of energy in other social situations or doing something stressful. Time by myself, to spend on a hobby – strumming a guitar or playing a game in peace – lets me recharge the social battery and give me a chance to calm down a lot of the anxiety that I’ve struggled with in recent years. But that doesn’t mean I don’t value time spent with others. I just have a limited well of energy to draw from.
It’s not intentional, or even by choice, but most of my hobbies I now practice alone. I’m quite classically nerdy and have a lot of interests I enjoy – I like video games, collecting Warhammer miniatures, playing music on guitar and mandolin (switching between heavy metal and traditional folk), writing, and dungeons and dragons. For the sake of my physical and mental health I have a few ways of keeping fit that I also enjoy – running, cycling, and more recently, indoor climbing.
Almost universally, I do all of these things alone.
(the exception is D&D where we have a semi-regular online session. It doesn’t work well alone)
Now this isn’t really by choice. Take playing music for example, I spent most of my late teenage years and my twenties playing music in local bands, going to gigs and talking to friends about it. It was a huge part of my life and my social circle. But as tends to happen, you get older, you start a family, work gets more important and it just fades away until it’s not really something you do any more. I still play music, just for my own enjoyment, but it’s not really a big part of my life anymore.
It’s the same for gaming. Growing up we spent most of our time playing games with friends. Slowly as we all grew up and left home, that moved into playing online together. But again, that’s faded away as it gets harder and harder to arrange sessions and by the time the kids go to bed, there’s not much energy or time left to try and get a game going. So I don’t really bother. I still talk about games with some of my friends, but it’s not really the same.
Even the sports I do find time for used to be more social. Many years ago I did Taekwondo and really enjoyed the social part of training martial arts. I was an active member of a running club a decade ago. I loved meeting up two or three times a week in a carpark in the hills and then trotting round a cairngorm nature reserve for an hour or two. It was brilliant. Since we moved house I joined the local club here and have been to a couple of sessions a few years ago, but then the pandemic happened. Now things are more normal, all the club sessions clash with kids activities or their bedtimes and it just isn’t feasible to make it along.
Before we had kids, my wife and I started going indoor climbing. Both of us were terrible at it, but it was something we did together and it was good to push us out of our comfort zone. A few years ago I tried to convince her to take it up again, but instead I find myself going to the boulder wall on my own and struggling in silence for an hour or so. I’ve tried suggesting to friends that they take up climbing so I can do it more socially, but hanging off a high wall, gripping tightly to some small bits of plastic appears to be a hard sell.
Now I know all these things can be social. I realise there are other people at the climbing wall when I’m there. I could even try and arrange social runs at lunchtimes with other people in the office that go running. They exist, I’ve seen them. I’m sure I could talk to them and suggest running the same route, at the same time, at roughly the same pace. I’ve even joined discord servers for the video games I like where they have regular online sessions, which I could join in. But that introvert part of me just doesn’t know how to do it and then thinks I’ll just end up letting people down when I can’t make it.
I’ve got into the position where I have lots of hobbies. But none of my friends that I do see, or any of my family, share those hobbies. So anything I’m really interested in I don’t have a way of enjoying with other people. It’s that feeling of not being able to share your interests with other people that makes me feel lonely.
My evenings are mostly a write off due to family commitments, so I can’t go to regular training nights, or folk sessions, or spend hours a week climbing. I’m also studying for a part-time degree with the Open University on top of everything else. I don’t have the energy to figure out how to make it work.
I’m sure this is something that will get better as the kids get older, and rely on us less and less. Or at least I hope so. I’m sure as well that this is a common experience. We all pine for our youth and the things we used to do when life was more carefree and we had no responsibilities. I also know there are people out there scratching their heads at this and wondering why I make it sound so difficult. I do see people my own age, with kids and responsibilities, who cope a lot better with making time for themselves to do things with clubs or groups, or make time to go see friends etc. I’ve just no idea how they do it. Answers on a postcard please.
There we have it. I don’t really know how to end this. I don’t have a solution or a plan of action to change things. Basically I feel like I’m alone a lot of the time, even though I have lots of hobbies, because I don’t get time to do any of them with other real people, and the friends and family I do spend time with, don’t share many of my hobbies. Maybe I have too many and need to focus on just one of them to do more socially? It’s a conundrum. If I could solve it, then it wouldn’t be a problem I guess!
Mince and Skirlie 