I don't know where to start. Lots of random thoughts going on in my head.

First: my dad is bugging me about staying too much in my room, having no friends or a SO. Again. This happens from time to time, I just ignore it. He just got retired and is still in the "what do I do now" phase. People are told they should work first then they can do whatever they want. You get so caught up wsith that, it becomes your life and once it's over, you are left with a huge nothingness of "what now?".

I felt like that a couple years ago, when I got out of college. What now? I got to the end of the mandatory educational path. My colleagues were like "oh, I'm going to get into a laser research program", "I'm going to get a master's degree in quantum mechanics" (I graduated in physics BTW) and so on.

What about me?

I said "I'm going to start a band". And have been pursuing that ever since.

The more I think about getting a job, or "a real job", the less I feel inclined to do so. Sure, money's an issue, and I've been teaching EFL for some time. My heart was never there, I couldn't serve two masters at the same time. Music is my main thing. Despite all the hurdles involved, I don't feel like giving up and conforming to what people want from me. To do that would be denying who I am.

Then I started a few businesses with not much success, a lot of resistance and some risks to my security.

I tried reaching out to the entrepreneurs in my area, but as I wrote before, since I got no social media profiles or Whatsapp, I don't exist here. In the end, after scouring the whole city, I found a local coworking space, met a guy who wanted to start an EFL school, he wanted me to work for him, I said no. Then I said "hey, since I'm spending so much energy on this, why don't I focus on my music career?"

What hurts the most is when I hear "you're wasting your potential, you're so intelligent, why don't you become an engineer or a doctor or a/an (insert high-paying job here)?".

Now, second point:

I'm feeling cut off from civilization. Not lonely. It feels like all the interesting things are happening away from me. We don't have many events here, I try to keep up with what's happening around here, but it's not much. All the cool things happen 200km from here. My goal is to move away from here, though money is the problem.

This is one of the reasons I signed up in Hubski. I feel I can type about it here. And yes, I want to be read/heard. I want to have a voice and I want people to receive my message. I feel I don't have much of a voice where I am.

Thankfully, there's the internet. I started a music review blog yesterday with the texts I had saved in my PC (took me 30 mins to come up with a name, thanks to my cat). I'm writing there as if no one was reading. It's my space. I don't plan on monetizing it or anything, just a space to share my texts at my own pace.

That's pretty much it.

Good morning! =D

I like the sound of Ashley and unisex names. Just that.

Albums that came out this year:

- Babymetal - Babymetal (one of the quirkiest metal albums I ever listened to) (BTW, it was released in Japan last year IIRC)

- Grimes - Art Angels

- Jamie XX - In Colour

- Leftfield - Alternative Light Source

- The Prodigy - The Day Is My Enemy

- Soilwork - The Ride Majestic

Favorite albums I listened to this year, regardless of release date:

- Goldie - Timeless

- U.D.O. - Mastercutor

- Shpongle - Ineffable Mysteries From Shpongleland

- Mr. Scruff - Friendly Bacteria

- Juno Reactor - The Golden Sun Of The Great East

- Vincenzo - Wherever I Lay My Head

- TOKiMONSTA - Midnight Menu

Yep.

Quite the great timing, I picked it up to listen again right now! 😃

I went through their entire discography last year... and I loved their version of "Lay All Your Love On Me".

What is your reason for not using the platforms and social media everyone uses?

- Facebook: it didn't really appeal to me. I don't share my life all the time with people and I found that engaging them over there wasn't very effective. Their attention was divided among many other things. Sometimes they wouldn't see what I posted because of the EdgeRank algorithm. Also, I felt much better when I didn't receive updates from everyone else all the time.

- Whatsapp (popular messaging app in my country): In the beginning, it was because of it requiring my phone number to use it. Other than that, since I'm not tied to any group of friends in these things, I took a look at the features. Didn't like it that I would have to ask permission to get in a group every time and that my number would be visible to everyone. Also, cryptography issues back then. I ended up using Telegram.

- Instagram: I don't really take many photos. Just of articles I read in magazines and posters I need to remember later.

- Reddit: I haven't mined a lot of information from there. Got some penpals once through /r/penpals and I'd hang out in /r/casualconversation, but... after a while it felt off to me. I didn't like the feel of the place. I also expected to meet more people from other countries, but most of them were from the US in these subs at the time (last year). In Telegram, most people are from Iran.

- RSS: This one was big back in the late 2000s, but now not many people use it because they get their news from their feeds in FB and the like. I use it to check my email, monitor some ongoing events, keep up with Hubski and follow the themes I'm interested in. I use it to run some Twitter queries too.

- Twitter: never felt like sending anything there, I just check hashtags for things I'm interested in and the trending topics once in a while. Tried using it with an account before, but I thought it was too disorganized. A lot of stuff thrown at one's face at once. Lists help organize things a bit better, but then the problem was checking them. I wanted to find a desktop client (because I'm too lazy to keep tabs open and refresh them). Since there wasn't any, I forked it to RSS.

- Youtube: I just go in there to do research too. Now I forked some channels to my RSS reader. When I can't find what I want there, I go to Vimeo or Dailymotion.

- Snapchat: Tried using it as a bridge between me and the people who use Whatsapp. I got it to run in an Android emulator, and the idea was to check it on my desktop, but that didn't go well. I scrapped the idea. Snapchat is more image oriented. Wouldn't be good for texts only.

This is pretty much it. I'm trying to use email more, so far I'm getting weather reports through there, and haven't found any newsletter that caught my eye yet. I stopped with the penpals too, we just drifted away from each other... and I rarely send anything at all. The more troublesome point was keeping contact with locals in my area, but I rolled back to phone calls and texting ,even though they charge per text and per minute spoken around here. I'd love to find a free alternative.

Hi. Gonna open the bar.

I'm experiencing all this stuff as well. My parents are like that: mom asked for the divorce last year, my dad was like "what? why? I see nothing wrong with how things are now". Then they go through the legal process, mom shows up here once in a while, they fight, she sulks, dad goes after her and so on. The worst part was when they tried getting me and my brother to take sides, which I vehemently refused. I said "don't get me in the middle of your fight".

That's how it used to be. Things are better now: there's still some of that attrition, but the get-the-children-to-dislike-the-other-spouse phase is over. My mom has also put more distance between her and my dad.

It's tough. We get used to that person and they get used to us. Letting go is hard.

What can be learned?

In my case:

- I learned to ignore my parents' bickering and to not get involved in it.

- I learned to disappear from the ex's social circle when things end and not come back. People change over time, but I prefer meeting new people.

- I learned to not get involved romantically with people I see often, like work.

- I learned to be picky about the people I let in my world. Because of ex #1.

I'm glad things are going well with the "prince"! :)

Hi!

I want to ask you if there are any Meetup.com groups in your area. They seem to be a good way to meet new people. Too bad there's only 4 in my city (3 of them dead) and the nearest "hub" of people is 200 km from here.

Ok, on to your post.

From what I'm reading, it's not about making people like me to be friends with them, it's about finding people I'm comfortable enough with to be myself.

This is pretty much the gist of it. The problem is:

It's most reasonable, but I haven't found such people nor see the prospect of finding them any time soon.

Hence the question about the groups. Volunteering has been suggested here by goobster, which works. I see it as a big group of people whose objective is helping others. :)

As I've written before, my problem is a lack of public meetup groups in my area which cater to my interests. I volunteered before, didn't really work for me. Tried connecting to the groups in the other city, turned out to be too expensive for me financially (travel costs).

Some more points:

Is it possible that I've already found people that could be my true friends and am just reluctant to admit it because it would mean I'd have to trust them?

When people like that show up, they make the effort to earn your trust. They go the extra mile. They reach out for you. Find those who do it and there's your answer.

How much do I tolerate from people, especially when they're being self-centered assholes?

This falls into the "up to you" area. Tolerate as much as you think you should.

For me, the tolerance level is VERY low.

I've dealt with self-centered assholes before (one was a close friend). In the end we just drifted away from each other

because it was always about him and never about me. What HE wanted to do. What HE wanted to talk about. My suggestions were always disregarded. Also, emotional abuse from his part.

To end this in a better mood:

What do I do? How do I lose the neediness? How do I make friends?

Be comfortable with being by yourself. You are your best company. When people who add value to your life show up, it's going to be a bonus. We have a saying in my country: "It's better to be alone than in bad company".

Also, seek the others. And hey, there's Hubski! :D

So, it's limbo time again. That time from Christmas until the New Year.

Everything slows down around here. As for the music business, the year ended in November. Looking forward to some releases in January (Garbage, Megadeth, Foxes, Gorillaz, Testament, XX and Soundgarden. I don't believe in Metallica releasing something next year. It'd be cool, but I'm not counting on that).

Spent some more time doing nothing, having energy spikes, going to bed earlier than usual out of the blue, playing video games a lot, binging on books, waking up earlier than normal, playing the guitar and reached album no. 700 in my list. \o/

Today, I feel light and happy about the new year. Really looking forward to it. Having a year off opened up my mind, even though there were turbulences along the way.

This year, I want to have a great view of the fireworks. Just me on an open field, lying down on the ground, gazing at the stars... away from all the noise in town...

Here's to 2k16. Happy New Year, people!

I'm in too.

This week I spent a lot of time doing... nothing. Really. Just sitting down/lying on the couch/bed and staring at the roof/window.

It's changing me. At first, I got the usual results: sleeping when I found myself tired, processing all the stuff in my head or daydreaming (my favorite, though I can't remember it when I'm back to normal). Now, it's making me think a lot about things: me being in wrong places, Hubski boosting my thoughtfulness, and for the fisrt time ever, I said "whew, now I got time for things!". I'm eating much slower (and a bit less) than before and savoring life in general. People seemed to catch up on this and seem more receptive to me. Details are more prominent lately, and it makes me feel blissful. That puts a silly smile on my face.

Basically, I'm getting to know myself again. I'm feeling warm inside, and more in the moment than ever.

2 days ago, I went through my backlog of articles I saved on Pocket and cleared it up. It was mostly bands I stumbled upon and bookmarked for later (it normally doesn't come, but this time it did). Also some movies and documentaries. But mostly music and fashion lookbooks.

Who knows what's going to happen in the next days? I'm looking forward to that.

inb4 Christmas

So, I want to know what all of your favorite non-American records are, across the entire range of genres, from Mali guitar rock to Brazilian folk, to Finnish tradition songs, to whatever you have.

Gee, I have A LOT to write about!

First off, something that might be what you mentioned. I'm keeping off the anglo-saxon countries for now:

- Accept - Blood Of The Nations (Germany)

- Daft Punk - Discovery (France)

- Goldfish's discography (South Africa)

- Wardruna - Runaljod - Gap Var Ginnunga (Nordic folk)

- MØ - No Mythologies To Follow (Denmark)

- Infected Mushroom's discography (Israel)

- Yellow Magic Orchestra's discography (Japan)

- Soilwork - Natural Born Chaos (Sweden)

- Supermax - Fly With Me (Austria)

- Babymetal - Babymetal (Japan)

Other than that, I like some artists from Canada: Deadmau5, Grimes and a lot of artists from England.

There are some cases of artists which are from the US, but incorporate music from other countries, such as System Of A Down (Armenian music) and Juno Reactor (Spanish music and Japanese music mostly).

BTW, I have 2 takeaways from your post:

1 - So record stores still exist... we don't have those in my area. When people sell CDs, it's either on bookstores or the supermarket. It's a weird feeling... though I wish there was a place like that here. I'd hang out there as much as I could.

2 -I have a few points to raise about the article:

It's a none too subtle way of reasserting the hegemony of Western pop culture. It ghettoizes most of the world's music

There's the assumption that all the music in the world comes from a few controlled channels. The internet has democratized the access to music. If I want to listen to Iranian music, I don't have to search far and wide for a CD and pay for it; I just go to Youtube, type "Iranian music" and I can listen to the song.

There is no one limiting my access to only what the majors want me to buy (Billboard's Top 100).

In my experience, the use of the term world music is a way of dismissing artists or their music as irrelevant to one's own life.

That doesn't happen only with "world music". People have different tastes, even for local music. People who like country might not like rock, those who like blues might not like grunge, and so on. You might listen to flamenco music and not like it. You tried it, didn't like it, end of story. Not going to be relevant to your musical world.

This grouping is a convenient way of not seeing a band or artist as a creative individual, albeit from a culture somewhat different from that seen on American television.

I understand this. People want something different, but not THAT different. Babymetal's album is a good example: what you find there is a one-third mix of metal, another third of j-pop and yet another third of a lot of genres. It becomes a mishmash of hip-hop, reggae (!) and techno in some tracks. For those who didn't know j-pop, it was too much to take in all at once.

So there you have it. For me, I don't do that kind of segregation. If I like the music, I don't care where it came from.

P.S.; I'll get the links later. It's 3 AM right now.)

My favorites excluding the tracks in Selected Ambient Works I and II:

I just write for myself. Didn't feel like publishing anything yet. It's usually some short notes (~100 words, the longest one has 300 words) on what I liked about the albums and what I thought didn't sound so well. I do that in an Evernote file. I can show you if you want, but it's in Portuguese.

I tried starting a music review blog before, but it just took out the fun for me.

People suggested that I should start a Youtube channel. I'm considering it, thought I don't want to expose myself.

In conclusion, I don't feel like the world needs my opinion on the music I like/dislike.

Desktop:

On the phone:

I use Vim for writing on my journal and everything else. It takes a while to get to a level where you can use it comfortably, but once you get there, for me I don't want anything else. It just feels like home. Very quick to navigate, you don't need to use the mouse for commands and stuff (keyboard only), highly configurable through a single file (.vimrc) on Linux and it's just a black screen where you put text (and code) in. For word processing and formatting, I use LibreOffice. At the end of the semester, I wrap everything I've written up in there and export to PDF.

This comment was written on Vim. ♥

So, here's how I became aware of this post.

I was checking the new articles in my RSS reader today (the old FeedDemon). I saw @goobster's badged comment, skimmed it and checked the article. As I was reading it, I thought "wow... what he mentions in here is all the things I've been doing all these years!!".

From what was in there, the only missing part for me was meeting people face to face, due to my disagreements with local people and the difficulty in finding like-minded folks in my town. But I'm getting off the point.

I quit Facebook around 5-6 years ago. After blocking posts by a huge amount of people in my timeline (and cringing at what my parents posted). I decided to delete it. Not deactivate the account. Took me a couple hours to find that hidden link to delete the account for good. Also, 2 more weeks so they would delete my data. Allegedly.

Then I got in love with RSS. With it, I can pick my own sources of information. I don't have to go to the websites I'm interested in. They come to me. I don't have another entity or people curating my timeline, deciding what I should see and what I shouldn't. I think this is a good example of rebellion hinted by Stephen Fry in his article. RSS used to be popular, but with more people reading blogs and the like through social media, it fell to the sidelines. Finding good RSS feeds nowadays for me has been quite an ordeal. In the past month I got around that problem. Also, @mk, I'm really grateful that Hubski has easy-to-find RSS feeds. Thank you!

The other mainstream platform I was trying to circumvent was Whatsapp, ever since Facebook bought it. To this day, I haven't found a way to get things from inside that app. It was mostly to interact more with local people in my area. Then I found Telegram and started using it to talk to international users (which I still do and love it). Now, back to Whatsapp, after seeing what people do in there and comparing both apps, I said "hey, I don't want to tap in there anymore. Nothing useful to me". Another funny thing was that I met people who used a Telegram unnoficial client in Brazil called ZapZap, and they didn't know they were using Telegram itself! One woman even went and said "Telegram is crap"!

My point with this comment is to share my experience as a person who doesn't use the platforms and social media everyone uses. It's not easy and takes a lot of work to set up things, but in the end... it's worth it.

I don't know. I don't drink.

As for general drinks, we have cachaca. It's made from sugar cane.

Wow. I guess you're in the same situation as me then. Welcome to the club.

After reading a bit about Tomsk, well, yeah, we are on the very same boat.

Yeah, Meetup.com has a big portion of programming meetups. I haven't looked much into why that happens.

But there's hope, you're still in uni! You can find people close too your age there and it's easy to find them. When you graduate, it becomes harder.

Me? Well, I hang out there too, but I finished my course. I go there once a week to check up on the current magazines and newspapers. Another thing I end up doing is chit-chatting with the library assitant.

this New Year I've met in an unfamiliar company of people in a private library. It was a bit stressful until we got warmer to each other, soon after the clock rang twelve times.

Cool! I struck up a conversation with a Danish couple in Buenos Aires a couple years ago. Thought they were Dutch and started talking in English. It turned out that they were staying in the room beside mine. I could see that they enjoyed the surprise.

I presume that, had I a familiar person beside me and were I more energetic, the warming-up would have been much sooner: this is how I operate.

If the person was familiar to you, it could have given you more comfort to talk to them. If the person was familiar to them, I agree, things could have gone a bit faster.

But.

It's never easy to talk to strangers. Even after doing it for years, I still get butterflies in my stomach. You end up learning how to deal with it. At best, it becomes a warm thrill. At worst, it freezes you.

It also turns out that it's not easy for them either. Trying to intersect different worlds is no easy task. It takes time to warm-up. No way around it. Take your time. It feels very creepy when people force connections.

For as long as I can remember, the week between Christmas and New Year's means our radio is on for the Radio 2 Top 2000. The best 2000 songs of all time as voted by listeners are played in one week, leading up to the winner just before midnight December 31st

Wow! That's really nice! I'll look more into these lists later. I wonder if the same names keep popping up.

What would you have voted? What are the best songs of all time?

From what you posted, I'd put "Riders On The Storm". About "Lose Yourself To Dance": I like that song too. I'd put "Get Lucky" and "Beyond" from RAM and the entire Discovery album. Speaking of Nile Rodgers, there are a bunch of Chic songs that I like. Especially the Take It Off album.

On a side note, I stopped halfway through AIR's discography. Don't remember why, I probably got hooked on another artist at the time or was in a more hectic mood.

Ok, here' my top songs list, I'll keep it to 40 songs:

White Zombie - Thunder Kiss '65

Aphex Twin - Actium

Yellow Magic Orchestra - Seoul Music

Diamond Head - Truckin'

The Crystal Method - Difference

Goldfish - Drive Them Back To Darkness

Infected Mushroom - Elation Station

Paul Oakenfold - Touch Me

Probot - Sweet Dreams

Rainbow - Cold Hearted Woman

Schatrax - Aliena's Journey

Groove Armada - Lazy Moon

Stone Temple Pilots - Piece Of Pie

Testament - Malpractice

TOKiMONSTA - Sa Mo Jung

Juno Reactor - Samurai

U2 - Discotheque

Vincenzo - Where You Are

Deadmau5 - Seeya

U.D.O. - Mission No. X

Us3 - The Darkside

Black Sabbath - Glory Ride

The Prodigy - Wild Frontier

Venom - Firelight

Slavior - Origin (not available on YT, but I'll put "Another Planet" here)

ATB - Twisted Love

Frankie Goes To Hollywood - Welcome To The Pleasuredome

Nine Inch Nails - Ringfinger

Gorillaz - Double Bass

Garbage - Sleep Together

Hallucinogen - Gamma Goblins {All The Way Down Mix}

Shpongle - Nothing Is Something Worth Doing

Babymetal - Onedari Daisakusen -it's track 7 in the album-

Leftfield - Open Up

Lil' Louis - Jazzmen

Nuyorican Soul - You Can Do It (Baby)

Mr. Fingers - Let's Dance All Night

Prince - Kiss {I found a Prince song on YT, YAY! \o/}

Soilwork - Bastard Chain

P.S.: I feel weird!!! It's the first time I can't find a song on Youtube! :S

Do you jam around bonfires or at parties sometimes?

I was in a few bands in my teens. Played in a RHCP cover band in another town and also with a wedding ensemble. Lately, I'm playing in my bedroom and sometimes jamming at the squares. Haven't tried busking yet. I also feel the need for a full band; I got lots of cool sounds in my head, but I find that playing a single guitar is very limiting. Thank goodness there are drum machine apps and DAWs.

What are you go to songs to play/sing?

Gosh, it's been a while since I played a full song. Normally I play metal/funk/video game tracks/random melodies I heard on new songs by ear.

P.S.: elizabeth, it's nice that you picked up the guitar again! How's it going?

I listened to the song you posted. I know very little French, but overall, it's just sounds to me. Even when I listen to songs in English, I don't pay much attention to lyrics (except when they are creative, since I started writing my own stuff). Now I got the chords on my ears.

People here are more laid back when it comes to IRC. There's a few get-togethers every now and then. When that happens, there's a post about it with the #irc tag.

  I'm there now

Do explain if you can.

My pleasure! Let's go by parts:

most of all people on the planet listen to music in some capacity

That's right. If their ears work, people listen to music.

whether it's great or small doesn't matter. It's like putting "watching TV" or "shopping for groceries

I get you. You're talking about the casual listeners. These are the people who listen to whatever music is playing on the radio at the moment or whatever is popular right now. When I'm talking to someone and they say "oh, I like all kinds of music" and they don't go in detail (genres, bands, etc), I identify that person as a casual listener. No problem with that, this is how most people start.

After that, you get into a single genre. I live in a place where those who care about music are crazy about rock and heavy metal. They listen to the most famous bands of their preferred subgenres. You could say this is the second level of the casual listener, along with the die-hard fan of a single band.

All are proper activities in which not the absolute majority of the developed world is involved. Hobbies are activities that distinguish you, that make you you, and I can't grasp how doing that thing that 90% of the developed world population does makes you any different.

Hmm... I think you should take a look at this list I shared with yellowoftops.

This is the difference between casual listeners and people who love listening to music. I started that list around 2 years ago. I usually go through the entire artist's discography, listening to the albums front to back. It used to be a single genre for the first 100-150 albums, but then I felt an urge to diversify a bit. Now, I listen to around 2-3 albums a day: if you look at the end of the list, you'll see that right now I'm oscillating between metal and disco.

About doing something that 90% of the developed world population does... well, we get a lot of great music with each passing day, and one simply cannot listen to ALL the music out there. I tried finding some bands in common with the people I used to talk about music, but it wasn't of any use: all the bands I knew were unknown to them, and they didn't know any of the bands I liked. After the 300 albums mark, I just stopped name-dropping the bands I liked, it's just so many! As time went by, I noticed my taste got broader and more specialized.

In closing, it classifies as a hobby for me because I get a craving for new music whenever I stop looking for new stuff. And there are the "oh, there's nothing interesting out there" cycles every 3 months.

This is interesting to know. =D

(starts grooving)

Hmm... listening to music (and writing reviews), writing music... programming (though I started developing Android apps last year, but didn't come up with any use for it, tried HTML/CSS but didn't like it much).

Lately I got drawn to movies and writing. Fashion has been an interest for quite some time.

After we broke up I hightailed out of there and cut all contact, so it's been a 3-month gap without really talking to each other. Just a fair bit of Facebook stalking.

I got a chuckle out of this part. I'm paranoid about everyone knowing everything about me, so I end up not using social media at all. Of course, it depends on how much I share, though people get skeptical if all they see in my profile is nothing. I'm pretty sensitive when it comes to people, so all the information I need is right there when I interact with them.

Of course, let us see if that continues, but you know what, right now I'm stupidly happy and don't care and I had someone to drink with after Thanksgiving and I have someone to cuddle with when (IF!, considering the weather right now) the snow comes.

I know yesterday I was just blindingly glaringly awesomely happy. That is how I have been feeling a lot lately.

Aww, I'm so happy for you! Love it when people are in love! :3

I used to run for quite some time, then I found out I have a problem in my feet and the doctor told me I can't run anymore. Since then, I took up cycling.

I am moving this upcoming weekend, to my Big Adult Single Living On Her Own Because Maybe Hates People Apartment.

I can relate to this. I still live with my dad (and looks like I'll be here for a couple more years). I really wish I had my own place.

All of us need people that we can connect with, people that we feel safe with, people that we consider true friends. What happens when those people are in short supply?

I've been living this situation for 5+ years. Now that I got out of college and out of a job, it got more complicated. Throw in my parents' divorce this year and their regular bickering and that's how it is right now.

In the beginning, I went out on my own a lot. Then, it got old and now I go to the library read the local newspapers and the new magazines, when they arrive. That's my only fixed outing involving people. I like walking around town on sunsets as well.

How do you fight loneliness Hubski?

Music. A huge drive towards making it in music, video games and the internet. It's my window to the world; without it, I'd be 10 years behind. My city tries to pose as a big and modern place while the mindset is that of a traditionalist small town. People go around and ask which family do you come from, people are closed off and there's not much incentive to socialize around here, apart from going to the mall. That's what everyone does here in the weekends.

I tried finding some groups to get into, even joined the only free EFL conversation group here in August (all the others exist inside the schools, you need to pay to get in), but that didn't work for me. Apart from that, I don't use Facebook or Whatsapp, so basically I don't exist in my town.

There were also the pen-pals in the beginning of this year: used to have conversations with girls from New Zealand, England, Australia and the US. We just drifted away from each other, and I don't feel like having pen-pals right now. I tried IRC groups too, that didn't go very well.

When I got interested in starting a company again in July, I tried getting involved in those start-up events, and the nearest one from here was 200km (~120 miles) away. In the end, I found out about the 2 coworking spaces in here, went to one, introduced myself and told that I wanted to help someone build a company, met a guy who wanted to start another EFL school, he wanted me to work for him and I backed off. That school didn't get out of the blueprint yet.

I like music and go to the few music-related events here. What happens is that there are always the same 60 people in there: we had a week-long musical event here last month, and you could see the very same 60 people in the audience every single day! BTW, we don't see eye-to-eye much, so there's also that.

When I'm out and about, I try to talk to people, but it just feels like we are far away from each other... they feel like an empty husk to me.

That's my story regarding loneliness and feeling detached from my environment. Moving out of here is the long-term solution, but I lack funds. What I do to cope with that is just put on my headphones when my parents start fighting and forget about the world. Music is pretty much my drug: one of the ways of escaping reality.