Social Stagnation  I feel like I have been socially stagnating since I graduated college. Part of me feels like I peaked in high school socially which is pretty depressing to think about if you ask me considering my social peak wasn't all that much as a teenager lol. I remember being 15 and socially awkward and getting a speech from a teacher at the time that this and college are the time when it's easiest to make friends because you're around your peer group all the time and that shit is gonna get a lot harder as you get older. And I remember panicking at that time because I was thinking *I'm already struggling socially because I'm anxious, hella traumatized, and in a bad home environment, and overall just plain awkward, WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT'S GOING TO GET WORSE!?!?!* Now that I'm older, I get what that teacher was talking about. It's not that friendship gets harder as you get older but that there is a separate skill set that you need to build for youself and also life just happens to people which can disrupt relationships. There is a whole logistical factor that you just don't learn about until you get older and it's a whole different beast to navigate. Don't get me wrong, I'm no where near as awkward I was 10 years ago and since I'm not in my home environment and have since gotten therapy, I don't have the same emotional challenges when it comes to keeping and maintaining friendships. And it's also nice that the people around me are also getting to an age where that's the same case for them as well so that we can communicate through our problems rather than start mess (not that I ever really got involved with mess growing up but still). So in some ways, friendship is easier now as an adult. But there is still a reason why I kind of miss the social environment of my high school and I want to explore that. Here are reasons why I feel like I peaked in high school socially: I had a diverse friend group in a diverse setting I'm talking diversity in race, gender, and sexuality. I grew up in a relatively culturally diverse area and I'm glad that I got exposed to that early on because I think that contributed to my overall social well being as an adult, both in terms of personal relationships and also not falling into weird right wing rabbit holes. I think being around a lot of gay, bisexual, and trans kids also helped me not fall into the traps of heteronormativity and the weird relationship standards that can come with. I also had a decent amount of guy friends in high school and I think that has stopped me from going down the *all men are trash, incel, pick up artist, porn addicts* pipeline of being paranoid around men and being overly pessimistic about dating. I miss having completely platonic guy friends and touching grass in general lol. And of course, being around different kinds of people and different experiences is mentally enriching and I love how it has made me into a more empathetic and understanding person even in communities I'm not necessarily a part of.  I can't say that I was besties with everyone but I did have a healthy mix of people I was close to, acquaintences, friends of friends, and people I was cool with.  College was weird man... I went to this super conservative, wealthy, predominantly white school. I think it was good for me in the sense that I learned how to handle people from different backgrounds/ across the political spectrum and I learned not to put rich people on a pedestal. At the same time, while I learned how to deal with people, I did have issues making friends. And the pandemic certainly didn't help. I spent the first chunk of college being kind of antisocial because I was going through a lot mentally since I started therapy and got out of a bad home environment. The second chunk of college was the pandemic and everything was remote. And that was frustrating because the pandemic hit just the moment I felt comfortable to start putting myself out there again and I started resolving a lot of things in therapy. Instead, I got locked in the toxic home environment I was trying to heal from this entire time and I couldn't talk to people in person for like 2 years. Then, the final chunk of college, I did manage to make a handful of friends but I was also trying to graduate and mentally recuperate from the collective trauma of COVID so lets just say I wasn't in a place where I felt like I could easily make friends. And worst of all, while I'm dealing with all of this, for a lot of the wealthy kids, the pandemic was like a minor inconvenience so they're even more so detached from reality from before. I had to deal with a lot of pandemic denialism in my peer group.  Thankfully, corporate has been better now that I'm around normal people lol. I'm not dealing with people who lack empathy and a sense of the normal shit that people deal with. But, it's not exactly a social environment because lord knows, I, a free spirited lefty degenerate who is contemplating being in an open relationship, cannot fully be myself around my conspiracy theory believing middle aged coworkers who are married with multiple kids. And there are limits of how close you can get to your coworkers because you don't want to ask questions that may seem intrusive in a work context but might be totally normal otherwise. There's a time and place for things lol.  Also, my corporate environment, though significantly better than my college, isn't the most diverse, at least in my age group.  Socialization was built into every day life  It was nice not having to essentially create a meeting in Google calander and have to plan shit in advance 4-6 weeks in advance. Sociability was waaay more accessible growing up. I think I read somewhere that it takes like 100 hours for someone to be good friends with a person. And while I don't think that's exact (I'm not telling my friends they've logged only 96.75 hours into our friendship so we aren't good friends lol), I think the principle of having to log a certain amount of time with a person to be friends with them rings true. And since sociability isn't as accessible for a variety of reasons from unstable work hours, living in different time zones, people prioritizing romantic relationships too much because we put more of an importance on that over platonic connections, people having kids, etc. it's MUCH harder to log in those 100 hours and takes a significantly longer time. It's also easy to drift apart from people for the same reasons. The thing I hate the most about post college adulthood in the suburbs is that you're no longer living life along side your friends and instead, you're living your life off to the side and every few months, y'all just catch up instead of creating new memories together.   Also, since you're doing only catch up stuff, sometimes you get the rude awakening that someone changed up on you in a weird way where y'all aren't aligned anymore on a values level but you weren't able to clock it since it's easy to put up a front for 3 hours once a month versus if you were to see this person on a regular day to day basis.  The vibes have been OFF since COVID  There is an increase in people cancelling last minute for social plans and people being overly reliant on apps to meet people. I also wrote about how convenience culture has made a ton of stuff that you would normally ask for help from friends into transactional exchanges. Plus, the world is rough right now for a lot of people and people are being overworked and that's definitely not good for the vibes and being able to show up for yourself, much less other people. It's another day, another existential crisis (or actual crisis).  I sometimes try to have casual conversations with strangers in public and I've had people look at ME like I was the crazy one while I'm being met with the vape stare (our generation's equivalent of the Boomer lead paint stare lol). AND I'M IN THE FUCKING SOUTH WHERE THIS WAS PERFECTLY NORMAL. Like I get if I got this treatment in the Northeast or the Midwest, BUT I'M IN FUCKING TEXAS, THE STATE THAT IS LITERALLY NAMED AFTER THE NATIVE AMERICAN WORD FOR FRIENDS. It's also usually people my age who look at me like I'm crazy wheras older adults are relatively normal. I genuinely think COVID done fucked the young people up since we were squishy brained during the pandemic.  On a side note, recently I had someone flirt with me at the grocery store a couple days ago. It was a very polite exchange and it caught me a little off guard since it's been a while. Then I realized that I haven't had anyone flirt with me in public since the pandemic. Like has the dating apps taken over so much more over the last 5ish years to the point that is the primary way people meet each other now? Granted, I haven't flirted with anyone in years since getting into my current realtionship, but still. I remember having little interactions here and there pre-pandemic, most of which were platonic with a few instances of involved flirting with others sprinkled in there. I also think that part of me wants to open this relationship so that I can flirt with people again because i feel like that has been a social muscle that I haven't utilized in a LONG time.  And as result of not using that specific social muscle and also being kind of hermit like because of my remote job, while I'm better at navigating relationships at 25, in some ways I feel more awkward and less charismatic compared to what I was like at 19. But then again, 19 year old me had some delusional confidence that I no longer have at 25, so I think in that sense, it's probably for the best lol.  I also heard that shit has been getting BAD back in the schools in terms of the Andrew Tates of the world and how a lot of things feel like they don't matter because of what's going on in the world. I feel like I had a relatively normal social experience with my peers back from 2014 to 2018 and graduating before COVID and TikTok becoming mainstream has me feeling like I caught the last chopper out of 'Nam. Not to mention that the streets have been extra rough in terms of dating because of the alpha male podcast bros and the normalization of incel culture.  So basically, I was around a variety of people that made me feel socially enriched growing up, I had more opportunity to make friends, and people were generally less weird and chronically online back then.  At the same time, while I do think I have stagnated socially after college, there are some ways I have felt like I have grown socially since graduating college. Here are some of those ways.  Figuring out how to navigate professional relationships  Presenting professionally at work: I think I'm better at looking like I have my shit together. I think it's also good that I haven't made being a free spirited lefty degenerate into my ENTIRE personality.  Navigating office politics and office gossip in a constructive way: This has been interesting since I am now in a mixed age environment and it's important to know how to diplomatically deal with power dynamics to effectively communicate and diffuse issues before they start.  Learning when to advocate for yourself, get feedback, and when/ where to pick a fight: I think that this goes hand in hand with navigating power dynamics but it also means learning to stand up for myself and my merits, taking constructive criticism and understanding when it makes sense to do so, and know the timing of standing for what you believe in.  Finding out what boundaries work for you: I'm still figuring this out. I used to be really closed off at work and I've been working on warming up to my coworkers within reason. Not only to get more opportunities but also to just be a decent community member of sorts. It's been better for me and the existential crisis I have been having with feeling like I cannot be myself at work.  Learning conflict resolution: I feel like there is more of an emphasis to work on certain relationships since it's harder to make friends. Also, it comes with time where even if you have been good friends with someone for a while, life happens and sometimes you do find yourself in disagreements with people and it's imporatant to know how to manage that and solve problems.  Learning Community Building: Since community is no longer a given based on school and college, you do need to go out of your way to build that for yourself. And that's a whole skill that you need to put in active effort towards especially since shit like convenience culture has made it so that things like this don't happen automatically by existing anymore.   I do think there is some merit as to why I feel like I'm socially stagnating after school. And it does make me sad that I wasn't able to socially bloom in the way that I wanted to back in college when a lot of people tend to come into themselves at that age. It is something that I had to mourn a little. At the same time, I don't think that this feeling of social stagnation is the most accurate evaluation of me developing socially over the years. Like there is most definitely something in the air but that's not like a death sentence socially speaking. Things are different and you do need to learn how to adapt and navigate the new environment.