I love talking to strangers. I am just exceedingly anxious about initiating conversation. I’m always worried they’ll take offense or something (‘why is this fat dude talking to me’ kind of stuff)...

Someone asks me something at a bar? I’m a total chatterbox, but I can’t recall a time where I ever started the conversation. The problem is, people don’t usually start conversations with me. I’m 6’4, huge, and a dude. I’ve non-ironically thought about getting a shirt made saying "ask me anything" and wearing it in a public setting.

One of the most fun things I can recall doing in recent memory was going on a pub crawl in Japan in spring 2019 (feels like a lifetime ago). I was vacationing alone after a business trip, and I just decided to sign up for a foreigner-aimed outing. An "all pretenses dropped, you’re coming here to meet and chat with other people" kind of trip. I had an absolute blast. The mix of people was like 60% foreigners and 40% locals. Didn’t really meet anyone I continued further communication with after the event, but it’s a fond memory. Didn’t manage to work up the courage to do a US based one when I got home, and the pandemic started 8 months later.

It really boils down to in my mind, where do I meet people around my age? All my current friends are people I knew in college and we all do a nearly-every-night discord meetup where we talk about life and play games. It certainly doesn’t provide the same happy brain chemicals that doing literally the same thing but in person did when we were all in college, buts it’s kept me sane for the last 5 years.

College was such a different social experience. I wasn’t top of my class grades wise, but I always got top marks in computer science and computer engineering courses. I also had a healthy amount of personal projects on the side. I ended up with this reputation on campus for being able to help with any of the computing classes, and I was always a firm believer in ‘master through teaching". I considered helping other people as part of my own learning process. For anyone who seriously wanted help, you could always reach out to me. I even gave supplemental talks for particularly rough classes during our ACM weekly "coffee and code" meetings.

Needless to say, this made me fairly popular on campus. I knew a lot of people and counted many of them as friends. The group was fairly diverse, both ethnically/culturally and by gender. We ate dinner together, met up and played games, built things, etc. it was a fantastic time of life. But there was one underlying thread - I had never actually initiated a random conversation. Every person I count as a friend today had either looked over my shoulder and was curious about what I was working on, was someone who asked for help in a class, was introduced by a mutual friend, etc.

That period ended 5 and a half years ago when I graduated and started working for a tech company you’ve definitely heard of. Things have been rough since then. I moved to SoCal because of the office I was working in. Only two of the people I knew from college went to SoCal, some moved out of state, the others moved to the Bay Area. I’m about to lose the people in SoCal, as they’re moving out of state to further their careers elsewhere. Now I'm weighing whether or not I should quit a job I actually like in exchange for moving closer to the people I know and a job that's an unknown.