The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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I'll add that if you're alone, and it's all you've ever known, it's hard to know what you're missing. I've lived all my teens completely isolated, and had you asked me, I would've said I was happy, or at least "satisfied". Then I got a friend, who became my best friend, and I realized what I've been missing this entire time. Later I got a partner too, and that truly cemented that I never want to be alone again.
While I do know that people who genuinely aren't interested in other people do exist, they tend to be extraordinarily rare. Now this is going to sound really dismissive, but I would put most people like me (and maybe you) into one of two camps. They just either haven't found someone they actually work well with. Or they do interact with others, but it's unpleasant, basic interactions that drain you instead of adding anything. Which gives you the perception that you don't like socializing in general.
But I bond with people over common interests(presumably most people do). If you don't have hobbies, if you don't have pets, if you don't have some common interest in talking about something with someone, why should you talk with them at all? Why should they talk to you? There is another option with which you can bond with others, which is your own personal life experiences, be they good or bad. But I wouldn't recommend that, since it hasn't worked well for me in the past.
I would recommend socializing more, because it can be an incredibly pleasant and fulfilling experience.
Also I have to ask, do you truly not have hobbies? Like what do you spend your free time on? Maybe your definition of a hobby is just more strict, but pretty much anything you do in your spare time from reading, to cooking, to playing games, or working out can be counted, among many others. Do you not do any of that? You mention Alan Moore, so presumably you read comics, so that's one thing, that you either don't count so it fits into your post more cleanly.
Tried that, in my youth. Hated it. Really find it draining to be around people, with noise and lights and drinking and chatting and everything. I've skipped more "this is our graduation dinner and happy time, here's your invite!/this is the work Christmas party!" occasions because I've gone to one or even two of those previously and the result was "the amount of enjoyment I got out of going was much less than staying home and doing my own thing".
I'm happy under my little rock!
That's not what I mean. I was also happy under my rock, but I'm happier under my rock with someone else. Even simply mundane everyday activities are more pleasant if you do them with someone you like, and who likes you.
Like this study showed anything is more enjoyable if you do it with someone else. Doing laundry, cooking together, watching movies, going out. That's the kind of socializing I'm talking about.
Not work parties where you're surrounded by strangers you don't know, don't care about, and aren't invested in.
And that gives me the hives. Possibly because I've become too used to This Is My Routine And This Is How Things Are Done, but trying to (for example) work in a kitchen with a sibling makes me very uncomfortable. I'm working training in a new co-worker and the amount of times I've had to bite my tongue about "go away! lemme do this myself!" (because I am not doing this myself, that is the point of training someone else to do it) has been very high.
I really am just "hermit crab, this my shell, go find own shell, farther away the better".
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