okay this might turn into a series of posts or something but I really feel like I need some advice here/really feel the need to share my thoughts (that have been brooding for some time):
im going to try to keep this somewhat short: I’m in my mid-twenties, have been doing my masters in something-something-media-studies for the last three years. I’ve lived in a shitty place with shitty roommates for that entire time, have a small job at the university that barely pays half of my rent and have lived off of government student grants/loans since then, which have now run out.
I don’t know what to do with my life, or rather I know what I would want to do with my life but it seems basically impossible: I want to live together with other people I like who don’t just feel like short-term acquaintances born out of necessity. I want to commit to living together with people for at least a few years and try to build something together with them. Create a nice shared space, share food, music, books, films and experiences. Make some art. Work just as much as I have to. Cook together and pool our resources together.
I think some people live like that. I dunno. I basically lived like sorta that for a few years during covid, when I did the latter half of my bachelors in another city when I moved in with a few people studying the same bachelors as me. But now we’ve all moved and live in different cities and meet up maybe once a year. I love these friends with all my heart but my life with them feels like a complete fluke that I just lucked into (and even then I often felt like I wanted more from our friendship than they did).
I know I really need to find new roommates and a new place to live but the city I am in has one of the worst housing markets in this country and doing the whole “roommate casting” thing just to get rejected again and again is just such a fucking mindnumbing chore (not to mention just how worse the sites to even find roommates have gotten, how many more people cling to their still-cheap apartments and how many of the actual nice apartments probably don’t even show up on those sites but just get shuffled around in-between friendgroups)
I don’t know what my problem is. I feel like I just don’t have the face (or don’t wear the clothes, don’t speak the right slang) to attract the right kind of people. I guess maybe I kinda look like a chud or a nerd (which I certainly used to be in highschool but have very much tried to distance myself from). I try to be a social person, talkative and passionate, considerate and all that and I can manage to do that a fair amount of time, but it doesn’t get me anywhere.
It feels like everyone already has their own friend group and their own thing going on and it feels impossible to get closer to anybody. Everyone is terribly busy and most people just seem to be terribly uninterested in getting together, there are no places to hang out, everything is terribly expensive, etc. etc. (this capitalism thing sure does fucking suck)
There’s so many posts online about how dating/getting to know people gets exponentially more difficult when you are in your thirties, how many people are just basically on their own, how many people have nobody besides their spouses or whatever. I feel like I need to do something now, because I sure as hell can’t live this lonely life for the rest of my short time on this wonderful planet earth.
I feel like I’m an “extroverted” person born into an “introverted” life. I wish I had a somewhat large friend group and always had someone to hang out with on any given evening. I just want to do the things I’m already doing but share them with more people (and also have a little bit of certainty in life).
I don’t know, if anyone has any advice or wants to share their experiences/sentiments I’d be glad to read any replies from you cool people.
Also if anyone can tell me if therapy helps with this (maybe even group therapy or something), or whether therapy gives you the energy to do the mindumbing shit capitalism asks of you for just the tiniest bit of happiness or if antidepressants help you radiate a warm happiness that makes other people want to be around you I’d be very happy to know about that too.
Thanks to all of you for always being there and hope you people have an as reasonably nice day as one can have in this genocidal capitalist imperialist patriarchal hellscape we all live in!
Advice on something like this is almost impossible to give because there’s so much we don’t know about your, your situation, and your opportunities. You say you live in a city with a bad housing market. If you have the chance, maybe a change of cities is the right move? That’s a big burden, not something I could personally do, so obviously I get if that’s not available to you. But if one your friends who moved loves where they are, going there could be huge.
I can at least give an anecdote that will hopefully make you feel better. In my local :psl: branch, a group of comrades live together in a co-op house with a few other people in exactly the fashion you describe - shared home responsibilities, cheap rent (eight people in a duplex); a cool multiracial bunch of communists and even a couple anarchists. One of the housemates definitely has a “nerd” vibe. I don’t think that will put people off if you come across as genuine in your communication. I’m a pretty unremarkable white guy but I get to share my experiences with a bunch of dope comrades who know and trust me. The opportunities are there. Worth noting that the co-op house came before everyone’s party membership.
I often advise people looking for a change to their social life to join an organization and make comrades. I hold to that advice, but I caution that a) you should strive to have a social life outside of your comrades and b) you shouldn’t join an organization as a social group. You should join an organization because you are serious about the work it does, and then that will also have social benefits by making you one of a group of comrades.
I met and hung out with some people like this in a city I lived near. I spent time with them for about a month and then had to leave that city because I got a job in another place. It’s one of those times I thought about saying “fuck the system” and turning the job down, but Capitalism called, I guess… 😭