Advice on growing as a person in late 20’s?
Hey, so I’m a long time lurker here. I’m 27M who lives in a nice city with great weather year round.
I have two real groups of friends. One is my buddies from my home town, which I visit every other week to see my parents and partly cuz I have nothing going on in the city I live in (hour away from my place of residence). The other is my high school friends.
The ones in my home town are what I would call deadbeat. Constantly drinking whether alone or not, always smoking weed. Literally no hobbies. I can hit them up on the weekend to go somewhere and won’t hear back till noon, and that’s too early because they are just waking up. I do enjoy hanging with them from time to time but I seemingly have nothing in common with either.
My other group of freinds from high school are pretty chill, but now almost we all live in different states and never meet up. The one that does live nearish to me is in grad school and has no common interests as me. It’s almost a one sided friendship as I’m always hiring him up.
I’m a single guy, and I’m getting incredibly frustrated that neither group wants to do shit. No travel, nothing. Not even to try new food spots. I’m feeling this existential dread that at 27, I’m not traveling, not living life to the fullest.
This past November I managed to quit weed after 10 long years of smoking heavy every day. To me, that’s a major victory. How do I move on? I’m tired of adding self-value based on other people. I don’t want to abandon my friends, but I’m at wits end on how to just make myself new and move on. I want to see the world and grow.
The first step of quitting weed and getting out from under it is done, but what’s next? Any advice is welcome!
2 comments
Is moving an option? Get far away and out of your comfort zone.
I was in a similar kind of situation a few years back and the short of me getting out of it was learning how to enjoy myself and my life without needing friends with me to “give me permission” to enjoy myself.
When i quit hanging out with my “deadbeat” friends I just started to fill my time with all the things I couldn’t do with them. For instance none of them ever wanted to go outside, but I like disc golf, so I put more time into that. None of them liked to go out, but i have fun doing Karaoke, so I started to go anyway without them. There are more examples but you get the jist.
As I did each of these things more and more I started to enjoy myself more and more without needing anybody, and i quit “needing” to have friends for me to be happy. People sense when you need something, and it makes it hard for them to trust you.
We all can think of somebody who tried to hard to be in a friend group and was consequently shut out, and it’s because the group doesn’t want to be responsible for fulfilling that need. That’s why we are attracted to people who don’t seem to need anything from us, because they never put us on the hook for their fun/enjoyment/happiness.