I think what's really happening here is that most people, especially older men, are realizing how much of their social life is tied to work and going to the office. My advice is to get some hobbies, make some friends, join some groups. Even if you aren't willing to go out, finding groups and chatting online in a voice or video call is probably better than just sitting in your home alone.
Yeah - I have been pretty slack with my social life over the past two years with the pandemic and a lot of friends moving away as well.
But I still wouldn't trade remote work for the world. I can get a climb in at my local gym in the morning and a swim in the afternoon - with plenty of time left to cook n clean and some quality time with the missus.
edit - also my home desktop is just awesome... 12k of total pixels across three monitors... An awesome omnidesk standing desk... can eat from the fridge the food that I need n want. Aint no office offering me this...
Am hoping with the Omicron abating can finally get out a bit more and re-establishing some connections.
I suspect there's a good chance you're going to wake up one day and find that you're an older man, so you might want to prepare yourself for the kind of social change that often comes with that.
That said, I'm actually dreading return-to-work to a certain extent, because it's optional at my company right now, so I've been able to make my office into a nice little interruption-free cocoon. I spent the summer outside with a laptop and 5G hotspot, but the weather right now isn't really conducive to that.
I wish we'd stop calling it "return-to-work" - I've been working for years. We should call it something closer to what it is. "Return-to-burning-hours-every-day-on-the-interstate" maybe?
This is where a lot of my friends split on remote work, albeit for a different reason. They often moved to new cities, so they built a life entirely around work.
I went back to my hometown, so I had a large social network there already. Co-worker events intruded on my time with them.
I think you are right. I've been fully remote for about 13 years. I love it, but I also have other things to keep me busy. I am a member of the local tennis club, and have many friends and acquaintances there, as well as year-round activities.
We also have many church friends in the area, and my wife and I do gardening and other outdoor activities, so, any "free time" that we end up with is easily filled.
Don't just be remote and a total couch potato, enjoy the freedom, and make the best of it.
It's harder to make friends once you get past a certain age. We become too set in our ways to be able to make friends.
Even if you have a hobby, it needs to be something that needs to be pursued in a group setting. Thus, hobbies such as singing in a choir will be much more effective at stimulating social contact than solo pursuits.
Why older men? All through my career, it was the younger folks who tended to treat the office as a social hub as well as the place they worked. As they got older, they'd develop more contacts in their communities through spouses, children, etc. and "fade" from the social swirl at work. At the very top of the age distribution you might find empty-nesters who have trouble connecting online, but those people were already leaving of the workforce (voluntarily plus ageism) so statistically I think they're outweighed by the youngsters who never knew any other way to meet people. What experience have you had that's different?
This is the solution but the pandemic crippled it's practicality as a huge census shifted to WFH. It's been 2 years now and even in Texas, which has aggressively "reopened", most social stuff has been slow to come back and quick to be paused. I dine out a lot but pretty much with a small family circle these days, minimal work meals & entertainment.
