re: #5 Belafon

My winter break ends tonight. As I go back to work tomorrow, I need to talk about something.

One of the things I did over winter break is read ALL of the Questionable Content online webcomic (I have read huge chunks of it multiple times). It’s a really good comic, but it’s most definitely an adult comic. The strange thing is how depressed it made me. It exposed a giant hole inside me that kind of hurts, the hole being a lack of friends.

I have mostly (not perfect at this) worked really hard most of my life. Some of it was expectations from my family - I was the first person to go to and graduate from college (even if it took 17 years) - but a huge portion of it was self motivation. I studied so hard in college that I burnt out. My solution, because I didn’t know what else to do, was to move from MA back to Texas. Then I joined the Navy. When I was in the Navy, I studied software development. When I got out, I came back to Texas. I worked, went to college, had two kids, and still studied non-school related software development in my free time. Even after my degrees, I still studied in my free time, though that was shortened due to children commitments. I’ve jumped jobs in part for the pay, but at times because of other factors, such as getting out of Nortel before it completely collapsed.

But this break the lack of friends caught up with me. I think what QC kind of hit was that I don’t have any friends that I can relate to. The problem with being a liberal geek at a job full of conservatives is not that they don’t agree with me on politics, it’s that most of them don’t like even a few of the things I like. The one group that I do relate to are the recent college grads, who are the age of my children. They’re the people who I can talk about anime or similar American cartoons, gaming, and cosplay.

So I’ve gone into a funk. I can’t concentrate very well. I’ve done almost no reading except for the above mentioned webcomic. And I have seriously moped.

The hard part is how to fix it. Being and atheist, I’m not going to church, which is the big thing to do here in Rockwall. And the kids parents I know about are pretty conservative, the kind that put Blue Lives Matter signs in their yards, send their kids to summer Bible camps and definitely vote for Trump.

I have found a place in Garland where I can go to meet up for D&D. So I really have to figure out how to build up a friend group from nothing, and with people who probably aren’t close to where I live.

It’s not quite a mid-life crisis, but the end of this year kind of punched me in the gut.

Edited slightly.

I could have written exactly this, Belafon. Going through the same thing, down to the job you do, the people around you, and the loneliness. It’s punching me in the gut too.

I’m going to work next year on growing friendships. I am pretty introverted and very shy but I can do it.

I have nothing pithy to say for either of us about 2020 being our year. But I believe it will get better.