Getting a life.

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This question is particularly for other adult aspies, say those over 30. I was at one time really into going out to clubs and occasionally went out to bars. It has been eons since I have set foot into a club or bar. I don't particularly like bars and clubs but it was fun to go out with friends on a Friday or Saturday night when I was in my twenties. Now I am older (37) and I feel like I am too young to just sit home all of the time. I am an introvert and enjoy activities such as reading and cooking. However, I am getting restless. Yesterday I went to visit a friend of mine who is temporarily staying at a nursing home (she's 46) because she is disabled and sustained a broken ankle and temporarily needs help. I looked around and saw so many elderly people just sitting around and it made me realize "Hey! Life is short!"

What kinds of things do you do to have a life? I don't want to get into anything like getting drunk, doing drugs, sleeping around, or anything like that. I do have some friends and I do some things socially with them but it's just that they are rather dull things like going out to dinner (Yawn). I don't have children or a spouse and it's getting old looking at the same four walls. I hate the garbage on television. I enjoy reading but there is more to life than books. I order movies and enjoy watching unusual type of films but this is also getting old. I find that it's so easy to get into a rut and hard to get out of, even if it bores the heck out of me. So to my fellow 30 and up aspies, what does one do when one is no longer a "young adult" but much too young for the weekly excitement to be going out to dinner? Any ideas? I don't enjoy huge social gatherings but it is getting really old to just sit in my apartment and read.

Hmmm, can't help you. I too used to go out a lot. I guess I just got tired of it, I almost never go out anymore. It feels like something's wrong when I got to bed at 10 on a friday night, but I'm tired and there's nothing to do.

It will be interesting if anybody has some ideas.

I'm 20, though maybe considering trying new things and meeting new people? ... dance or akido or something from the regular routine.

Though I'm not the voice of experience, I find it's nice to sometimes just try stepping into something you wouldn't normally be part of (within reason).

As Americans say, just my two cents ...

Taking a class in a new skill is good, but for sheer emotional rush, nothing beats being a volunteer in your passion. Since you like reading, you could become a library volunteer and read to kids, or go to lonely people in a hospital and read to them.
You could join a book discussion group. My husband and I love C.S. Lewis discussion groups.
My passions are ecology, gardening, and books. I just got back from two weeks of grinning my head off in Rwanda as I donated books about ecology and sustainable farming to the University in Butare and visited the little library I made for a Christain school and worked alongside Pastor David Nahayo planting noringa trees in the yards of poor women in mud homes and experimented with growing mushrooms and new crops for Rwanda. I gave books about soil building and diversity and agroforestry to a Congo agriculture student. I had SO MUCH FUN!
I went with www.comeandseeafrica.org.

The only thing that gets me out and moving is gardening... if I had more freedom (I have kids) I'd go to libraries and museums as much as possible. There are a few botanical gardens near me that I enjoy.

Get out of yer house and join ANY group that you share an interest with. Literary, political, volunteer, religious, and so on....

Meet like minded people, take a college class to challenge yourself and meet younger people, take an art class to learn painting or drawing or photography, learn to play an instrument, help the poor at a soup kitchen, or help Autistic kids, or single moms, plant a garden, buy a sportscar and learn how to maintain it, get a e-mail pen pal and write them often, get a part time job in a coffee shop to meet interesting people, focus an obsession so you can sell stuff on Ebay ....

Travel....

Even if it's only within your own state.

Passion.

It doesn't matter what you're doing, if you're passionate about it you have a life.

I sometimes slide into believing the widespread NT attitude that a full life includes action, people, etc, and that my life is a sad pathetic "passed it". But the difference between the times i think i'm washed up and when i forget to even wonder about it, are not to do with whether i'm going out, doing things , seeing people, but my state of mind.

Gee I don't know what to tell you. At 38 I am still finding dinner out with a friend exciting. But I work 40+ hours a week so I get plenty of time being among other people. So what little free time I have I am honestly content being at home doing things I enjoy. Actually I spend a lot of my free time sleeping because I feel exhausted from the work week.

The only thing I can suggest others already have--volunteering, finding a support or hobby group, joining a church... maybe finding someone to date as dating/relationships appears to take up massive amounts of one's time and it appears you feel you have too much time on your hands.

Just got this email from an Atlanta friend:

Salman Rushdie will speak at the Glenn Memorial Auditorium at Emory on Sunday, February 10, at 5:00 p.m. Click on the link below for more information:

http://www.emory.edu/events/2008_Rushdie.pdf

In the meantime, I hope to see you January 27 to discuss his book, Midnight's Children, at La Madeleine at Perimeter Center West.

Just start joining activities until you meet people. At the very least, get your schedule packed with positive things to do, and the rest should happen naturally, given time.

Would you enjoy meeting people or do you prefer doing things on your own? I like ouinon's remark about passion, and I think that's true. Joseph Campbell famously said 'follow your bliss' - I think he could have put it as 'follow your passion' too - find what it is and follow it.

Was there anything you enjoyed as a kid that you gave up that calls you to go back to it now? Sometimes we know at a very early age what we want to do but are dissuaded from our passions by adults because they are a 'waste of time' but they're what we really enjoy doing, writing maybe, or art?

Maybe try a few new things that are really 'way out' from what you would normally consider.

My passions are art, poetry, swimming and hill-walking. These are quite solitary activities so I do some voluntary teaching too because if left to my own devices I would quite happily become a hermit, lol, and I need to keep using social skills or I forget how to interract with people I don't know very well. So that is a bit of challenge which takes me out of my comfort zone.

I think the important thing to 'getting a life' is to make sure it is your life you're getting, and do what you feel makes you happy. It matters not a jot what anyone else thinks.

I remember feeling this way at about the same age. Too young for the 'old fogey' stuff, too old for nightclubs and parties.

I think my dogs fill up a large part of my life because they're emotionally needy creatures who keep me busy. I also like gardening.

I think another poster was right when he said that when you're working you don't care about a non-social life because you're forced to be around people at work. So maybe go back to work or work one day a week somewhere.

I am 51. Mostly, I lecture, meet with students, do research, and waste time on the Internet. No, I don't have much of a social life either. However, today, I had lunch with the other members of the sociology department, but that probably doesn't count.