I see people asking about friendships on here (and elsewhere) all the time and I commiserate. But over the last few years I have been greatly expanding my friend circle very naturally. And for baseline, I'm 39, married, no kids (yet), and a full time SRE.
For me its been all about hobbies.
A few years ago i started asking myself "What would young Colin want?"
IE, what was I interested in as a child, that as an adult I could learn from.
I realized there were big aspects of who I was, or how I grew up which were simply missing from my current life. So I started to add them back in in the simplest ways I knew how.
For me that meant that over the past 5 years I've added, short backpacking and canoe trips (rental canoes), learning to snowboard, playing golf, Ice Climbing, Photography, going deeper on my electronic music production.
The biggest wins have been snowboarding, camping, and by far golf.
With snowboarding, I was able to get some existing friends and then coworkers to start going on quick 3 hour drive day trips. A few existing friend got back into the sport, a coworker started and bought gear, I met 3 more coworkers outside of my team by organizing work trips. I just went with two guys this weekend who were old workers from a few years ago, its our 4th season doing these trips and Ive probabbly expanded my circle from 1 friend to about 10 who have participated.
With camping, it was similar. I had one friend who started with me, then he invited some of his friends and they invited theirs. The group keeps finding more people and coming up with new ideas. Weve probably got a circle of 8 people who have gone and weve done about 3 years or regular trips. there are more people who WANT to go though, its just a matter of time.
BUT GOLF IS THE REAL WINNER.
Everyone seems to know these days of the "third place" problem, or the "Bowling alone" problem. Golf really has avoided these issues and really after 2020 lockdown expanded a ton. With golf, first of all... you can go alone, and you will meet usually 3 strangers every time. And in the last 3 years of doing that, I have met amazing people 99% of the time. really it would be very difficult for me to name a time i met someone i didnt like on some level... and some of the people ive met have been amazing. BUT, the old adage that "business happens on the golf course" is still true today, even in tech. We have a golf chat at work, and I regularly play with our CTO and other bigwigs at the company that I would never have met otherwise. In fact the very first person I met at the company (its a remote job) was the CTO... because we just both wanted to play golf. I am personally NOT a networking guy, when i play golf.. i dont talk about work. some do and that fine, but I let others decide. Besides work, I have about 10 people that I have kinda integrated into little outings. some are just terrible golfers and we go to terrible cheap courses and enjoy the sunshine, losing balls and then finding them in the woods. I have a best friend at work because of golf, and my work connections spread far over the company into areas i absolutely would never have ventured otherwise. Ive played with people from finance, law, tech, commercial real estate, medicine, advertising, film production, people from other parts of the world... so many that I have played with over the last few yearsthat it is simply uhh, mind boggling. I could go on and on about golf, but im gonna shut up about it.
Start doing things you love, pursue things you think are out of reach, bring a couple people you might know along, ask them to bring their friends, ask to play again when you meet someone cool. Its often awkward!!! and often fails... but you have the ability to open up your own world, and the world of those near to you.
Ive been using the MPC1000 since around 2004, and owned and used an MPC60 for about 5 years. I recently had my 1000 serviced by a guy who does nothing but MPC refurbishments/customizations and he asked me how I felt about the whole "MPC Swing Magic" and what not.
My feeling is that the MPC60 really DOES feel better, but mostly because of its velocity sensitivity. You can really easily get a ton of dynamics without much effort at all. Much much more easily than with a 1000, or a midi keyboard, or any number of pads devices that I've tried. and yeah that for me includes machines which allow for variable velocity curves.
The thing that blew me away was that he told me most of the guys he's selling MPCs use them on FULL VELOCITY at all times. that making sure the pad sensitivity was in perfect condition was not a priority for them. I was shocked... but he was equally shocked I felt it was the velocity which makes the difference lol. Keep in mind these are pretty hardcore old school Chicago producers buying the best of the best vintage machines.
Get a helpdesk job, work your way up into IT, take on projects as you learn. Youll be a Dev in no time. It doesnt take many special smarts and youll eventually find out that 90+% of people working in tech have no CS degree or educational background in tech. And actually a ton of the work is just "plumbing". Most of the job is not fancy advanced algorithms and almost all of the practical learning takes place on the job. the stuff a person learns in school has almost no relation to actual every day work in tech.
Just get an IT/Helpdesk job and you will have a tech career in a few years. It worked for me, and most of the Devs/SREs/SeniorIT/Networking people I know.
I logged in for the first time in a very long time to reply to this.
For what its worth, those posts made me feel the same way.
But this is typical internet stuff... you see someone doing well, it triggers an some kind of emotion. you see someone expressing anxieties about something you can relate to, it triggers an emotion. Its the same thing as looking at hot people in advertising, or people having fun on instagram. Its not reality.
"For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business."
For me its been all about hobbies.
A few years ago i started asking myself "What would young Colin want?" IE, what was I interested in as a child, that as an adult I could learn from.
I realized there were big aspects of who I was, or how I grew up which were simply missing from my current life. So I started to add them back in in the simplest ways I knew how.
For me that meant that over the past 5 years I've added, short backpacking and canoe trips (rental canoes), learning to snowboard, playing golf, Ice Climbing, Photography, going deeper on my electronic music production.
The biggest wins have been snowboarding, camping, and by far golf.
With snowboarding, I was able to get some existing friends and then coworkers to start going on quick 3 hour drive day trips. A few existing friend got back into the sport, a coworker started and bought gear, I met 3 more coworkers outside of my team by organizing work trips. I just went with two guys this weekend who were old workers from a few years ago, its our 4th season doing these trips and Ive probabbly expanded my circle from 1 friend to about 10 who have participated.
With camping, it was similar. I had one friend who started with me, then he invited some of his friends and they invited theirs. The group keeps finding more people and coming up with new ideas. Weve probably got a circle of 8 people who have gone and weve done about 3 years or regular trips. there are more people who WANT to go though, its just a matter of time.
BUT GOLF IS THE REAL WINNER. Everyone seems to know these days of the "third place" problem, or the "Bowling alone" problem. Golf really has avoided these issues and really after 2020 lockdown expanded a ton. With golf, first of all... you can go alone, and you will meet usually 3 strangers every time. And in the last 3 years of doing that, I have met amazing people 99% of the time. really it would be very difficult for me to name a time i met someone i didnt like on some level... and some of the people ive met have been amazing. BUT, the old adage that "business happens on the golf course" is still true today, even in tech. We have a golf chat at work, and I regularly play with our CTO and other bigwigs at the company that I would never have met otherwise. In fact the very first person I met at the company (its a remote job) was the CTO... because we just both wanted to play golf. I am personally NOT a networking guy, when i play golf.. i dont talk about work. some do and that fine, but I let others decide. Besides work, I have about 10 people that I have kinda integrated into little outings. some are just terrible golfers and we go to terrible cheap courses and enjoy the sunshine, losing balls and then finding them in the woods. I have a best friend at work because of golf, and my work connections spread far over the company into areas i absolutely would never have ventured otherwise. Ive played with people from finance, law, tech, commercial real estate, medicine, advertising, film production, people from other parts of the world... so many that I have played with over the last few yearsthat it is simply uhh, mind boggling. I could go on and on about golf, but im gonna shut up about it.
Start doing things you love, pursue things you think are out of reach, bring a couple people you might know along, ask them to bring their friends, ask to play again when you meet someone cool. Its often awkward!!! and often fails... but you have the ability to open up your own world, and the world of those near to you.