Early Retirement Extreme Forums

Work and Isolation

My recent travels and being entirely displaced from my daily routine for weeks now have given me some space to think, and I think I've made a decision on what I'm going to do: I'm going to go find an in-person/hybrid software dev job some place I would enjoy working and move close to work.

The main reason I'm doing this is I think working from home and living alone has contributed to a lot of social isolation, and I just don't think this is healthy. After working from home 3+ years and trying for the past year and a half to make friends, the conclusion I've come to is that I'm spending too much time alone and it's worsening the depression. And the depression, once it gets bad, makes it harder to connect to other people because I just don't feel very good, which makes everything draining. I've also just noticed my tolerance for socialization is a lot lower than it used to be, and I attribute this to the depression and getting too used to being alone. To some extent, your ability to be around other people is a muscle, and you need to exercise it.

Because here's the thing: when I got into ERE, a lot of it was driven by escapism. I hated work, I hated my life, and it was easy to construct this fantasy of eating lentils and spending no money and being fine. But as I've gotten older and come to understand myself better, what I've realized is I just don't want to be this disconnected from society. I had this negative attitude about everything, especially work, that turned into a self-fulfilling fantasy of me taking jobs I always hated because I never expected better.

But the reality is, a lot of interesting experiences are locked behind work, a lot of interesting, smart people tend to be in software, and there are 10 million software companies out there. I'm sure I can find one that aligns with my goals.

Now, I am also being realistic here, and I don't think this is going to solve all my problems. Work can become its own form of escapism by making you so tired from work that you don't think about anything else in your life. Companies have every incentive to overwork their employees, and I've had plenty of toxic work environments/coworkers that I have hated and contributed to bad mental health too.

But what I've realized is that if I want a rich social life, interesting work, or even to switch careers, I need to be engaged in whatever I'm doing. It's important to be active, look for opportunities, and keep moving. What is not getting me anywhere is having a WFH job where I do the bare minimum and then end up lonely because all my socialization is done in 1 hour increments at the bar or at a book club or online.

I also don't see whatever new job I'm going to get as the ideal, end point in my career, but what it will be is a way to get me reengaged with a business network and help expose me to people and business opportunities I'm probably not getting from board game club. Realistically, I do still intent to switch careers at some point in the near future. But switching careers requires that I actually care, which won't happen if I have a passive attitude and keep working at underwhelming positions. I'm viewing this as something that will build skills I need (engagement, networking) and also forcing a move I need to make anyway (sell my house and move to the city).

And it's not like I'm going to become a workaholic. I still intend to keep working on my novel, my health, and making new friends. Work and life don't need to be a black-and-white box where having a job means I can't do anything else either. It's just that novel writing, exercise, and bar friends are not really enough to push growth in the direction I need, which is the direction of more social connection and challenge.

What socialization do you envision getting out of in person work? IE:

Going out to lunch
Drinks after work
Arguing about design on a white board
Code pairing at someone's desk
Office social events like baby showers and birthdays
Random water cooler talk
Enough shared stress that they begin to care about your broader life
Mentor / Mentee relationships

I've been trying to meet people while doing interesting things. I figured out doing things with a high barrier to entry yields solid individuals. Charity work with hard physical labor - good. Free library event where anyone can show - bad. A problem I've run though, once I find someone good, I don't know what I want out of them.

Like I'm still not that into eating out. I don't drink. Sitting around someone's house is kinda boring. I don't really want to host the same. Beyond the immediate shared domain, I find nothing compelling. I could try to share one of my other activities, but it's easier to save it for that domain's peer group.

I imagine a shared connection will build with some of these people over the years, but I can't articulate what it is I really want. Sometimes I think I'm just afraid of being a "loser", even though I'm perfectly happy with a highly solitary lifestyle.



I've considered using work to find good people. But absent knowing what I want out of them, I hesitate. Now that I'm not working, I find the friends I did catch from work, don't have much in the way of shared interests. Especially if they have kids, they're just too busy for my new games. We're drifting apart.



For what it's worth - I worked from home for 10 years. Towards the end, it felt like living at work. I think there's a lot of value in creating physical separation between the two. For that reason, I'm into the idea of being hybrid or in person.

@Scott 2 - Great post with a lot of food for thought. I resonated with a lot of this.

Scott 2 wrote: ↑

Thu Jun 29, 2023 2:18 pm

What socialization do you envision getting out of in person work? ...A problem I've run though, once I find someone good, I don't know what I want out of them...I imagine a shared connection will build with some of these people over the years, but I can't articulate what it is I really want. Sometimes I think I'm just afraid of being a "loser", even though I'm perfectly happy with a highly solitary lifestyle.

I've ran into this issue a lot too. I've started to view my relationships as mediated through something external to them, which tends to imply whatever you're doing ultimately turns into a social role. This is one reason it's so hard to maintain relationships outside of work if you are single and have no kids. The number of social roles for "single person with no kids and no job past the age of 30" is pretty limited. You are pretty much just left with bar and hobby friends because these tend to be the only social roles available to you.

Incidentally, this is why I think almost everyone who FIREs either goes on to have kids, change careers, or just have an extremely independent personality where following their own interests is just innately satisfying as a raison d'etre. It's a hard problem to move past, although perhaps not impossible.

But to answer your question, what I'm looking for in a work social environment is everything you listed plus the background socialization of work plus building a network of people with skills and connections who might present me with better/different opportunities to do interesting things. Basically, bar friends are pleasure friends but work friends are business friends, and business friends get me default socialization plus opportunities.

Scott 2 wrote: ↑

Thu Jun 29, 2023 2:18 pm

For what it's worth - I worked from home for 10 years. Towards the end, it felt like living at work. I think there's a lot of value in creating physical separation between the two. For that reason, I'm into the idea of being hybrid or in person.

WFH is definitely not the paradise it's made out to be. I mean, don't get me wrong, there are a lot of perks, but it also can be utterly joyless and draining in different ways. For me personally, I've found the problem is it can be just as draining and stressful as something in person except you aren't getting social support or physical barriers. So I end up needing more socialization than I'm getting and have a harder time finding it while also being more drained.

I like your framing as "what social role am I trying to fill?" A lot of my trying activities, could be seen as an in person survey of possible roles.

some of this isn't wfh, it's wfh in suburbia

it's different when bustling city life is right out your door and you just need to come downstairs and cross the street with your laptop in order to be "alone with other people" at a coffee shop or a bookstore. you'll get to know the other regulars eventually, those are social connections.

@Scott 2: when you say you don't know what you want out of others, all you describe are potential activities you could do. Consider, instead, potential conversations. When your focus is on conversation, the activity is a backdrop: so it's not "just sitting around someone's house" it's "talking about interesting thing A" and someone's house is just a convenient place where that happens. Ditto for "a sense of connectedness." It doesn't much matter whether you connect with someone over children, code, or hiking--or being at the same coffee shop at the same time. It's the sense of connectedness that matters.

ertyu wrote: ↑

Fri Jun 30, 2023 5:24 pm

some of this isn't wfh, it's wfh in suburbia

I second this.

As much as maybe thinking that moving will solve ALL of your problems is likely inaccurate, thinking it won't solve any of them is also incorrect.

The burbs are set up to be isolating. I know tons of people who don't have kids who are over 30. The people who do have kids still usually come out. My friends with kids who stop going to social stuff are the people who I know that are most likely to feel isolated.

Don't forget to let us know how it's going after you move to the city and have so many social events to attend that you don't post anymore!

@ertyu, @J+G

You both do have a point, and I appreciate your insight.

However, I've also decided I need to take a break from this forum for awhile to focus on screwing my head back on in the right direction. The stress from the HOA situation has derailed my ability to make sound decisions and I need to take a break to regather my bearings. I will come back and post in this journal once I have a major update.

Best of luck with all the insanity @AnalyticalEngine. I’ve been through some nasty HOA stuff but nothing on the level you are dealing with. Take care and look forwards to reading your update when you make it back.

The HOA sounds incredibly stressful. Best of luck getting it sorted. Time away from the internet distraction is probably smart.

ertyu wrote: ↑

Fri Jun 30, 2023 5:24 pm

@Scott 2: when you say you don't know what you want out of others, all you describe are potential activities you could do. Consider, instead, potential conversations.

I think I've managed to find good people within the suburbs. It may be my existing social circle has already filled the "connection" need.

Best I can tell - I'm looking for a shared experience that is better together, mentoring/collaboration that creates growth, or a joint effort that impacts the world. But all of that happens within an activity context. My original thought was find the long term people, then play long term games. But it looks like the games come first, at least for me.

I learned to do the performative rapport building and liking dance within a career context. I could certainly force relationships with those tools. Only, I don't think it serves what I'm looking for. Better to be my authentic self alone, than pretending with company.

I am finally back inside my own house. The electricity is back on, but half my appliances and half my light fixtures are fried, so I am waiting on a repair for those. In all, this is going to cost $15k-$20k to fix. My deductible plus things I've fixed that the insurance didn't pay for has been around $2k. And, as expected, my insurance is subrogating the HOA.

This whole mess was not good for my mental state. I do not do well with chaos, and this was certainly a lesson in that. It made me realize how much I've been relying on routine to manage my mental health. Still, I tried to make the most of the disruption in my life to make some changes for the better.

1. My parents - Part of what made this a nightmare was having to live with my parents again for a few weeks while this got fixed. This really did not do my mental state any favors, because as I've written in previous posts, my relationship with my parents is somewhat strained. But if this electrical disaster has any silver lining, I was able to patch this relationship somewhat during the interim. I'm not going to get into all the details for the sake of privacy, but things did at least improve.

Also it made me realized I really do need to move out of this town, more on that later.

2. The internet - I completely got off the internet while dealing with this. This was actually very hard because I've realized my internet addiction is still very much there, but at least confronting that made me deal with the problem. I went from being on screens for six hours a day down to two hours a day, and this includes productive time.

Note that six hours a day is actually the daily average for an American adult. Which underscores something I ran into when getting offline, which is that everyone else thought I was weird for doing so. I talked to a few people about uninstalling all the apps on my phone, quitting YouTube, quitting social media, and a lot of people thought that was nuts. I think internet addiction is actually very normalized now, especially among younger people.

Anyway, getting off the internet was a huge positive change. It made me realize just how much background stress all these distractions are and how much I was using them to avoid making other changes.

I did, however, actually make a Facebook account for the first time in ten years and joined some local urban sketching groups, which I attended in-person. I think the correct use of the internet is to use it to find opportunities to do stuff off the internet.

So I'm going to stick to even more digital minimalism in the future.

3. Writing - This was a big disruption in my writing project, which was also difficult because trying to finish the novel has been a major goal of mine all year. But time away from the project also made me realize some major improvements I could make to it, namely taking writing as a craft more seriously. My skill level is plateauing and I need to seek more deliberate practice to get better as a writer now.

FUTURE PLANS
This whole mess was a lesson in priorities, and I'm rearranging my goals accordingly. I've spent too much time being distracted and avoiding making the big changes I need to make in order to live a fulfilling life. So here is my new plan in order of importance.

1. Physical Health - Which includes diet, exercise, and sleep. There is absolutely no substitute for these things and I cannot function unless I stay on top of all of this. And while I have done well enough with these, there is still room for improvement, especially my diet. So I am going to commit more energy to doing these things right.

2. Relationships - Which I'm defining as virtue friends. I've done a lot of stuff on meetup and met some interesting people, but because of where I live, most people are busy with marriage, kids, and work, which has limited my ability to find friends. So I decided to spend a weekend down in the artsy part of Denver as an experiment, and I found there were way more people there willing to casually hangout. So while all these light interactions I've had with people on meetup are still important, there is a difference between someone you see for one hour at book club once a month after driving 45 min to get there and a nearby group of people you have a closer connection to beyond the hobby.

Relationships are something I need to put more energy into, mainly learning how to cultivate closeness and connection instead of just talking and networking. This is going to involve some internal work, putting myself out there in the correct environments, and moving to a place where it's easier to make friends.

3. Moving - I've decided I'm going to rent my house out and try NYC for a month. NYC is not cheap, but I'll find a way to make it work. After that month is up, I'll either try a different city or just move to downtown Denver or stay in NYC.

None of this is going to be cheap but I've already hit FI and I'm still working, so at this point, I'm just going to spend the money and live where I want. I've used frugality to stop me from actually making changes in the past, and I trust myself enough to know I'm not going to go broke. I mean, my NW is almost a million dollars. I can afford to live where I want.

Plus location is hugely important for networking opportunities, and given I want to change directions in what I do to make money, I need to be in a place that makes it easy.

Which, speaking of work, I'm going to keep my remote job for now. I still might go back into the office eventually, but the ease of my remote job is giving me the energy to get my shit together, and I want to avoid making career decisions out of desperation or using work as a distraction from my problems.

4. Writing - Writing is actually my biggest "freedom-to" goal, but the issue with it is that I only produce good writing if my life is otherwise together. Also it's important to have actual life experiences so you have something to say about life when you write. So while I'd like to put this as my number one goal, I need to keep it down here at number four. Because as Stephen King says:

It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn't in the middle of the room. Life isn't a support system for art. It's the other way around.

All this said, I'm going to focus more on tradecraft and actually finishing novels to sell rather than getting distracted with world building/research/etc. I want to take this seriously as a professional and not a hobbyist, so the mindset change is important.

Goals I might prioritize
There are two other goals I have that I might put on the back burner for awhile. They are deliberate practice in drawing and learning Russian. I still really want to do these two things, but I'm struggling to juggle them with everything else I have planned, so they might have to go on the back burner for awhile, at least until I've moved and found a new friend group.

I'm excited for you to try out NYC. Even if you live there a year, spend twice as much as you do now, and never end up making the connections you want, at least you'll know. You will have tried. Seems like a good move as far as avoiding regrets goes.

I agree with Grundomatic. When DW and I got sick of the midwest suburbs last year we fled to NYC. It was a different circumstance than yours because we had lived there before, but a lot of our reasons for going were very similar.

DW and I were just talking about how, even though we came back to the midwest (but not the suburbs) after just 9 months, we have no regrets about the move. If anything, it's like the point Grundomatic made — had we not gone, we might always wonder if NYC was the place we were truly meant to be. For whatever reason, we are the type of people who just had to get that out of our system. And it was a lot of fun! (Besides the time it started raining from our roof because a water pipe burst in the rent controlled unit above us that the landlord was not maintaining in the hopes the tenants would leave. But hey, Brooklyn gonna Brooklyn)

I hope you have an amazing time! I don't know if you bike at all, but I will plug the CitiBikes as a great and affordable way to get around if you get a year pass. The bike lanes there are mostly great by big city US standards and there are stations everywhere.

If you are going to be trying out cities on the East Coast, you might also want to check out DC.

pros: Very queer friendly, very progressive, cheaper than NYC, bike friendly, lots of greenery, not too dense but very much a city, lots of youngish (20s to 40s) chidlfree professionals doing interesting things (and a lot of them are NOT involved in politics), free world class museums.

cons: more expensive than most places, quite transient, lots of inequalities (although that's probably true of most cities). national politics are right there and sometimes it gets a bit nuts...

DC has one of the highest % of MA+ degree educated residents in the us. A disproportionately high number of women as well - and some of these will be queer.

Quite a few of them are

What i love about dc is how there's hiking trails that go right through the city
rock creek park is awesome i could be out the door and on a trail within 20 min

Yes, Rock Creek Park is awesome for hiking and biking.

Thanks for the feedback, everyone. My reasoning is pretty similar to what you have, @Smashter. I might end up finding out NYC is not a good fit for me, but I think I'd regret it if I don't at least try it. I often feel like I played my 20s too conservatively in order to save up money, and I'm at the point where I feel like I need more life experience in order to grow. This is probably going to mean I end up spending more than I am now, but I really don't think spending money is going to be a problem for me if I am smart about it.

A recent example: I've been trying to write historical fiction about the cold war, which made me aware of the fact I need to know way more about Russian culture to make the story good. This then made me realize it's really hard to know anything about Russia without knowing Russian...so I've been trying to learn Russian for free with online resources. And while I have made progress here, it's honestly sometimes joyless because I'm doing this all by myself. I have also tried to connect with native speakers and other people learning the language, but it's all largely been online, and I'm finding serious limitations with doing everything through a screen. On the other hand, I can spend $300 to take eight weeks of Russian classes at a local Russian language school, which is going to put me in contact with other people in this area trying to learn the language, at which point I'm going to have a much easier time setting up a Russian language conversation group or finding local native speakers to practice with. This has the benefit of making it easier to make local friends too because I'm meeting people in person and not relying on only free online resources.

In the past, I would have said $300 was too much money and not worth it because I can learn this for free, but I'm now realizing paying for access to a network is a legitimate strategy, especially when you're taking these fairly cheap classes.

Now a VHCOL city like NYC is going to cost a hell of a lot more than $300, but I don't really think I'm going to live there forever. What I'm really trying to do here is get out of my comfort zone, have more experiences, and run prototypes of possible lifestyles to discover the best fit for me. To that end, spending a year on rent in order to get that experience is worthwhile. Again, because it's hard to be a writer without having lived anything to write about.

@NewBlood, @ertyu - DC is on the list of places I want to check out, actually! Largely because it's one of the setting for the book I'm writing, but also because there are a lot of museums and cultural events I want to check out there. What I need to figure out is how to visit all these cities in the most affordable way possible. I'm considering doing 1-3 month rentals in a few places, but that is still somewhat pricey. I think I may just be spoiled because I househack'd my Denver condo into only costing $900/mo and now everything is sticker shock.

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Other Stuff
The HOA incident majorly triggered my depression into relapse, which was very much not a fun experience and caused me to do a lot of soul searching. That made me realize a lot of the issues I've been writing about in this journal are basically just manifestations of the depression, and that tackling the depression is probably going to resolve most of these problems. I also don't want to be making these major life decisions from a place of depression. Emotional stability is important when you are otherwise going to up end your entire life.

The two main things I've been focusing on are self-care and reframing black and white/negative thinking. Self-care has largely amounted to avoiding all screens, running 5k almost everyday, eating whole food plant based meals, going to bed at 10pm, and making sure I'm getting enough socialization. And then I've been reframing my thinking by writing vent entries in my personal journal then taking a step back and trying to find where I'm distorting reality with negative opinions. These two things are helping a lot, although they are also admittedly a little bit frustrating because I feel like I have to plan my entire life around this routine or else the depression becomes unbearable.

I'm going to keep this up for a few months as much as I can, but if this lifestyle change alone doesn't resolve the depression, I will probably go get back on SSRIs again. Depression is really an awful thing because it saps away any joy of living for years and years and years, and at this point, I'm honest to god sick and tired of being sick and tired. And again, I want to make major changes to my life, but I want to be emotionally stable when I do make them, and so getting on top of this is probably the most important thing I can do.

It's fascinating how similar 2 people on the internet from completely different countries and walks of life can be. I very much relate with you :
- The high functioning depression and the empty fridge analogy
- The idea of freedom from VS freedom to
- Doing the bare minimum at work (because it's somewhat incentivized) and how it spills in your personal life
- How "not spending" can be bad because you're not spending time on doing the things you want

I like your introspection and this thread is goldmine of insights and perspective for me, so I hope you can keep journalling, and work towards what you want !
Depression is really tricky and it seems you've had many important realizations about it. I hope you can appreciate all you've done and not be too hard on yourself for it.

AnalyticalEngine wrote: ↑

Fri Aug 04, 2023 10:36 am

...a little bit frustrating because I feel like I have to plan my entire life around this routine or else the depression becomes unbearable.

I've had similar thoughts. When eating right, exercising, meditating, and even having fun with my friends were not things pursued to enrich my life, but rather to keep me propped up and able to sorta function, yeah that's a SHITTY feeling.