Isolation - Working from Home

Sounds like the ideal situation to me! 

Thank you, yes unfortunately, due to distance to the offices, it is likely to be all or nothing with regards to working from home


When working in an office previously, most of my friends were from work. So I have considered going back to an office to help in making friends, but it could mean changing careers and a pay cut and ultimately losing the things that I like about working from home. Although the isolation is hard, I decided against going back to an office in some way



I do think it's likely I could possibly have the best of both worlds, if I could just nail down the social side outside of work


When working from home I have no problem being on my own during the day and my ex-partner used to be my main social interaction and also the source of friends. When we split, our friends went with her as they were mainly from her work



I hope to join a badminton club when this virus is over, but not great at many other sports, other than that I don't have many ideas

I am not really into volunteering, though I would in an animal shelter, but the nearest is quite far away

It's a bit too intimidating for me to just walk into the local pub on my own (it's more of a town than a village, so a little harder to know people from the street)

I've seen this website suggested but have not tried it due to the virus www.meetup.com

Given the distance element, sounds like some non-work social interaction is going to be needed.

But first just a couple of things re: working
- making the effort to spend some time in the office could have benefits other than just social.  Getting yourself in front of your boss(es) and colleagues might simply improve the working relationship and - as a contractor - may improve chances of retention if it's a question of "we currently have two, going forward we only need one - who shall we let go?".   
- when my 'place of work' wasn't readily commutable, I'd find overnight accommodation which can (or could!) be booked quite cheaply if done sufficiently in advance - eg: Travelodge would often have rooms for £19 per night. Not always on the doorstep of where I wanted to be, but if it would cut a four hour drive down to 30mins so that I was more likely to arrive on time and fresh, then that's twenty-quid well spent in my book. 
- I've also block-booked accommodation using services like fivenights.com and, more recently, airbnb.  Wouldn't always use them, even though paid for, but useful for when just starting a role and wanting to have a more regular 'on site' presence and/or needed to be more flexible over where I was and when. (A lot of my roles involved site-visits and physical deliverables.)

Yes, the above all requires expenditure, but I considered a 'cost of doing business' and would be part of the evaluation process of whether the role was financially viable for me to undertake.

As for the social side of things, if you plan to join a badminton club, why not see if they have a facebook page / group thingy or similar and hook up with them that way?  They may be arranging 'virtual' events (but probably not matches!) that could kick things off for you.

Similar story here. 

Other than family or neighbours, my whole social circle emanates from the gym. There's always someone organising a walk, hike, run or cycle ride. Even during lockdown there have been regular classes via zoom. Also regular zoom coffee mornings for catch-ups. I find these a little awkward to participate in,  but force myself to attend. I'm not a natural socialiser.

My advise is,  find a local group(s) related to something you enjoy or are interested in. Everything else seems to flow from that. Don't try to force anything, other than yourself to attend. It can take a while before natural friendships form. 

I agree with the nutter thing, but it's more awkward for me as I think I am one 😁

I'm male. I think this does make it harder as most of the classes are mainly women. Having thought about trying to justify that statement I really can't. Thoughts of women sticking together in their cliques, not wanting to appear to be a pest etc come to mind, but it's probably just my own subjective bias. I've only ever been a man,  so it's difficult for me to see it from a woman's perspective. Incidentally, one of the guys I ended up as friends with turned out to be gay. Not a problem for either of us, but we naturally tended to pair up in some of the high energy classes that were dominated by women (Body Blast, Lean n Mean etc).

I never really went to the gym classes with the intention of trying to make friends. I'd been a member of the gym for quite a long time. I almost exclusively used the actual "gym" part of the gym,  I.e. exercise machines and weights, for a very long time. I never made any friends that way. Never really any more than just saying hi to people that tended to exercise at the same times as me. Quite a few people wear earphones and most want to get things done as quickly as possible. I now avoid the actual gym completely as I'm doing so many classes that I really don't need it and the classes are much more sociable. 

I started going to more classes after a particularly traumatic and PTSD inducing experience. As a result I split from my partner of 20 years standing, took early retirement and dropped my whole circle of friends. After several weeks of moping I realised that I was severely depressed and needed to do something about it. One of my strategies was to ensure that I got out of the house every day. I didn't particularly want social contact, but I realised that it would be good for me. One fairly easy solution was to sign up for a Body Blast class. My ex had dragged me to some of these in the past when her friends were away as she didn't like turning up alone, and i quite enjoyed them. At least I enjoyed the after effects. 

Again,  I wasn't really looking to make friends,  just thought it would be beneficial to get some social interaction. Turning up to classes 10 minutes early meant that there was time to have a quick chat with others that were waiting and wasn't too long to endure if no one was talking. The exercise had a major affect on my depression.  In fact I'd go as far as saying that if totally cured it.

Some classes are more social than others.  Can't put my finger on why. I attended a yoga class for nearly a year before finally having a proper conversation with anyone.  As it happens,  I'm a very keen gardener and decided to take a load of spare tomato plants in one day to see if anyone would like them. That seemed to be the key with the yoga class.  I now take any surplus veg in,  and have become Mr popular.

I think that if I was trying to make male friends in particular I would try the Boot Camp classes (circuit training) there just seems to be a higher proportion of men in there and you have to team up in pairs for exercises.

Some people find it quite intimidating to join in classes that they haven't tried before as they are worried that they might not be very good at it. This can be hard to overcome,  but I've found people are much more willing to engage with me in classes that I'm particularly bad at. I'm OK at the high energy type classes, I've exercised most of my life via various sports, running and hiking, but I'm shockingly bad at pilates as I'm very inflexible. People are much more likely to chat to offer advice and encouragement when you're rubbish at something. I guess it makes them feel better about themselves. So don't avoid things just because you're bottom of the class, it might be a social advantage.

If you're particularly worried about not keeping up then my advice would be to start with a spin class. You get to choose the level of resistance that you're peddling against,  so it's easy to turn the resistance down and essentially freewheel for a while without others knowing. It can be harder in high tech gyms like the one I go to as they now have the bikes linked up to a large projector screen where we race against each other,  but you can always disable this feature if you don't like it.  But again, don't worry about being bottom of the class. It makes everyone else feel good about themselves.

My deeper friendship circles have come from daytime classes where I've been invited to join small groups for coffee after (my gym has a Starbucks). This only tends to happen to the daytime classes,  which are even more dominated by women,  I'm ok with that. The evening classes do lead to occasional invites to the pub after,  but these are much rarer in my experience Christmas or someone's birthday etc.  Once you're in one of these daytime cliques it tends to become a regular event. If you end up in more than one clique you have to be very careful about spreading gossip between them. I'm always internally amazed at how much bitching goes on between the groups,  often started by a misinterpreted comment between otherwise perfectly pleasant individuals that gets blown out of all proportion. Class territorial disputes can also be a prime source of unspoken conflict. I always ask neighbours "if it's OK to stand here" when starting new classes. It's amazing how much information that can sometimes elicit.

I'm a keen runner.  I find that it's by far the best way of keeping my weight in check. Mentioning this fact in a new group, especially among women, almost always leads to the opportunity to start up a new running group. It's surprising how many people would like to be a runner but feel that they wouldn't be able to do it. Everyone without specific disability/illness can. They just need a bit of gentle encouragement and a sensible plan to start slowly and build up. I've started a couple of groups this way and several regular participants who thought they couldn't run have gone on to complete half marathons and constantly tell me how much weight they've lost. I take as much pleasure from their achievements as they do, and it forces me to get out when I don't feel like it as I don't want to let them down.

The invites to cycle, run, walk or hike tends to mainly come from the various daytime coffee drinking cliques. You could also join one of the local interest groups in your area if the gym class thing doesn't work for you. A local foreign language class might be another idea. 

Sorry I've rambled on far more than intende, but I guess that's OK on a chat thread!

Having read that back to check for the usual autocorrect errors it sounds like I'm putting myself forward as some social guru.  I can assure you that nothing could be further from the truth. I'm generally a fairly unsociable type that happens to have stumbled across some very nice people at my local gym who have taken pity and befriended me.