True story from my first week an university. I was a typical bright, nerdy guy away from home for the first significant amount of time. I decided that I had to do _something_ to force me to not stay in my room and it had to be something that was going to get me to meet people unlike me.

So I looked around and went for something well outside my comfort zone: ballroom dancing. I had no idea how to dance at all, but you can learn to dance and you dance with women. Also, all the other people there were in a similar situation (some had danced before) but most were doing it to try something new.

I don't know what's going to work for you, but there's something out there.

It worked out beautifully. After staring at a screen and sitting down for 8-10 hours, I could spend an hour or two getting the shit kicked out of me. Since I lived in the city and was traveling against traffic, it had a chance to die down while I was working out. Aside from the endorphin rush that accompanied the workout and the physical changes that accompanied struggling to the point of immobility 3x/wk, I got a nice confidence boost which stayed with me through most of the job interviews that followed after I relocated. It was like all the panic and nervousness of the week got expelled in the span of six hours. For six months after I stopped (moved across the country for grad school) I could sit through job interviews thinking, "There is nothing this person can do to me physically, mentally, or socially which I cannot handle. This person has no power over me. I am in control. I am the authority."

I might try ballroom dancing when I have the time again, as I think it's more practical from a social perspective than fightin'. (Seriously. The knowledge and confidence to dance wins 10/10 in social scenarios.) Still, try both!

For me, it was tennis. I started playing and fell in love with it. It all began when I was working from home for a startup in another country. I would work and in the evenings, I would quietly slip out to the courts, play for two to three hours, and return back to work. Tennis is an amazing sport, if you play it passionately and properly, and only just for fun. Once I got better, I began looking for local tennis circuits. The coach I used to play with put in my name at a local tennis tourney. It was the first tourney I ever played. And I was jubilated, not only at being able to play a properly arranged tourney, but at realising that what I previously thought that there were hardly any good players around locally was totally wrong. There were many talented players, of all ages, who were just as passionate about tennis.

I fell so much in love with tennis that it became the only thing I was passionate about in life. I dearly looked forward to slipping out of work to playing tennis. I participated in more and more tourneys, and even though I lost, if it was a good match, I felt extremely satisfied.

Last year, I quit my work from home job (which last 4.5 years), mostly because I felt I wasn't getting anywhere working from home. I joined a local startup not too far from where I lived which was working on things I loved. Along with it, I switched tennis clubs and joined a professional tennis club where top-notch players coached and played and where I could find many a good player to play with.

All in all, I think that the advice, "do something that has nothing to do with any of this", is really something you ought to try.

This is actually some of the best advice I've heard in a while. Never thought it would come from HN. Thanks.

The other piece of advice I'd give is: "Do things that scare you but where you can overcome that fear". I, at least, find that I have great satisfaction from that.

Having said that, I can't recommend dancing highly enough, it's added an enormous amount of joy to my life. Programming scratches an intellectual kind of itch for me, but dancing scratches a much deeper one

So go out to bars and have fun (who says you have to go with friends?!), date more, travel, take a class, swim in the ocean, jump from a plane, write a bucket list and do it all! Whatever, just make sure you seize life and get on with it.

Oh, but before you do all that, let me know how you manage to make enough to cover your bills in 8 hours so that I can jack in the full time job and spend more time with my kids ;)

(I'm enjoying your blog, by the way.)

I like to travel slow. At least one month in each place. That gives me enough time to rent a place for a month, with is cheaper, and to really get to know some people.

Don't bother doing freelancing until you have to. But if there's a side project that you'd like to work on, do work on that!

I've been spending 3 months in Cape Verde, loving it. After that don't know where i'm going. Indonesia maybe?

Travel travel travel, travel as much as you can! :)

I've been doing this since October & loving every minute. I still work full-time (remotely) as I don't have savings, but just being in new places has really changed my outlook & actually made me more excited/focused on the work I'm doing.

I freelanced for a bit via sites like We Work Remotely, then I found a full-time, remote role. I earn a SFBA market wage too, which actually means I am saving more being in countries with a much lower cost-of-living, than Sydney (where I was from) or SFBA itself.

Try online dating. Tinder/okcupid. Meet some younger girls who still like to go out and party.

Take up active hobbies that force you to be around other people. Yoga, indoor rock climbing, dancing is another good one.

Try meetup.com to meet new friends and activity partners.

If you have the freedom to travel, why are you staying in your apartment!? You can settle down when you're old and grey. Get out and explore the world.

Stop thinking about myself and start thinking about others.

Find someone who needs help. Help them. Repeat.

Before you know it, instances will become classes and you'll have more important things to do than you could have ever imagined.

And a real nice byproduct will be that you will have addressed your original issue far better than you could have by focusing on yourself.

Disclaimer: I'm in the frontier between these two generations. I was taught to be like this.

I wish I wish I could be like you advise. I can listen my father words in your words. By the way I read your book, great ideas there.

I'm totally not projecting, I swear! ;)

I was in a similar situation, except I did not have that much money at the time. My wife and I sold everything that we have, bought a caravan and a car to tow it. Travel the east cost of Australia. Did jobs like cucumber picking, laboring for house building, fishing at the local beach for our daily meals etc. It was tough going with my wife as we learn about each other that we did not know before (the situation forces it). At the end my wife and I were closer, and we were much more rounder as a person.

But I crafted that lifestyle for myself specifically after having a pretty lonely miserable time living in my home city. Shortly after school I was in a sort of similar situation living alone, working in tech, not making new friends, spending weekends with family, not meeting girls etc. I knew some friends who moved to LA, so I disposed of everything I owned and moved out there. I completely stepped out of my comfort zone and lived with a bunch of guys in a fratty situation in Hollywood as it was becoming colonized by hipsters. New friends, parties, women all this stuff I was isolated from back home just became my lifestyle all of a sudden. I bounced around road tripping, went to Hong Kong randomly. Its something that really changed the tempo of my life in a way I would never pass up.

I probably set myself back a lot financially and career-wise. I lived in the bay area for a time, I got bored and moved back to LA to party. I turned down tons of business opportunities. Do I regret it? Not really. I'm not rich today at all but I met my wife during that time, all of my best friends. I learned how to balance freelance and life so I have ample free time while still paying the bills.

So basically do something that makes you happy. Get out of your comfort zone. Put yourself in the places you'll have the opportunity to make the most out of socially. Reinvent yourself. Its worth it.

Just don't blow all your money.

If you goto backpacker destinations you'll meet tons of people your age, from all over the world, looking to go on adventures and have fun. Most of these places are relatively cheap compared to the UK/US, have existing communities of freelancers and you get to experience another culture/way of life.

For the last 1.5 years I've been living in Thailand doing freelance work. The quality of life, people I've met and life experiences far outweight even my best years back home. I'm 30 now and I look back and wish I would have made the leap to go abroad at 25.

The other big benefit is that you can save a lot of money with little effort. I try to not work more than 4 hours a day and still save more money than when I was working full time in the US. Plus the lifestyle I can live in Thailand is amazing in comparison to the US. 1 monthof living frugally back home (Seattle) is what I would spend living it up for 3-4 months in Thailand.

First of all, relax! you are only 25 you have all your life in front of you. The best years in your life are about to come.

In your case I will travel for a couple of months on your own. Go to asia, south america... you'll have a lot of new experiences and get to meet some people.

Also you can practice an sport or get a new hobby like playing an instrument, you have a lot of free time and you'll meet new people.

I moved away from the big city to a small New England seacoast town and commuted to my technology job. It was an artist/writer colony and I began to meet all sorts of creative types, cranky traditional New Englanders, fishermen, artisans, and like minded others seeking alternatives to the big city.

I started going to local folk dances, I joined the local community chorus and sang with them for a year. I took modern dance and ballet classes. The dancing led me to dust off my rusty musical instruments and start jamming with friends, which led to playing music in folk dance bands, and my social life just expanded unbelievably.

Ultimately I met my life partner as well as many other friends in this community, and we now have a child who's growing up in that community as well, taking her to Scottish dances and square dances and the like, a very wholesome community for children versus the typical TV culture that I myself grew up in. By the way, I recommend raising children; it's the most challenging, satisfying, crazy, and rewarding project I've ever been involved in!

I often recommend that guys in a guys' world like technology and engineering try folk dancing or other "soft" arts that tend to attract women and cool other guys.

If you're not into dancing or such things, that's cool, and there are myriad other activities out there. Our modern civilization may have its share of problems but it also offers rich cultural opportunities that are distressingly under utilized by many young people.

Whatever you choose to do, enjoy life and know that you have many decades ahead of you to explore the world and raise a family if your path takes you in that direction. Best of luck and stay healthy!

Alternatively, upsticks and move to Bangkok. You'll find it easy to make friends.

I've done both, so feel free to email me (in profile) with questions about either.

I suppose in a non-self help way life is about living a bit outside of your comfort zone... so what are you scared of? Do that.

Make certain that the flight is one way and that you aren't just dipping your toe in like I did at the start of the year. You need to be able to flow while you are travelling (having to deal with a flat or stuff that's not tied up back home is shit) and it's really easy to meet people if you can book a highly rated hostel room. "Hello" works.

I think I've just given myself the bug again, why is it so grey outside on July 11!

Be careful with this. I had to book a one way flight once but it actually worked out more expensive than booking a return. So sometimes it might just be cheaper to book the return and not use the return trip.

Don't prepare your intro story. "Hey, I'm Steve and I've just decided to go travelling but I'm a hacker and I had this startup and then I freelanced..." etc. Just say, "Hey, I'm Steve. Nice to meet you." The rest can come out naturally! It's good to meet people from all walks of life and by preparing all this backstory you might overwhelm people or become a caricature of yourself.

Oh, and if you do go travelling, and need someone to take over your freelance work - please get in touch. I'm basically the same as you but 26 and not single, not planning to pack it up and take a break just yet.

Good luck.

EDIT: And hey if you wanna get a beer some time with someone new lemme know, I live in London too.

The best age to travel is now. I had a similar amount of money due to redundancy so went and backpacked up the East coast of Australia for 4 months, sometimes on my own, and sometimes as part of organised coach tours and it was probably the 4 most important months of my life because it opened my eyes to work-life balance after being on autopilot on the school-college-uni-job route.

So put your flat stuff in storage, get a backpack and visit:

Hong Kong (because it shows you what life is like if you live to work, and you can pick up a decent SLR and lens dirt cheap there)

Vietnam (because its amazing)

Cuba (before it changes)

I can recommend Sydney for NYE; warm, strangers sharing beer and BBQ food and becoming friends. Great people.

If no one wants to go with you then use organised backpacker coach tours where needed, and you'll meet people and will make friends easily as everyone is in the same situation.

I also want to bring in that many of my friends/colleagues are starting serious relationships later and later in life. Some have children at the age of 38. Some find out they have a lot of trouble having children. They become very unhappy.

I wonder how many more people choose like me: Settle down with a woman you look up to, travel, yes but don't wait to long. Have kids, it is impossible to imagine the joy they bring when you don't have them.

When your kids leave the house, your are mid-fities and a lot more wealthy. I plan to take my kids around the world when they are up to it. In Thailand I met a lot of families with kids in the 6-12 range. They have a great time sitting on elephants and swimming with dolphins for a couple of dollars.

That said, nothing wrong with a bit of travel while you are still young, you might even meet your s/o along the way.

I feel a bit of regret reading all these comments, I might have traveled more knowing what I know now. But I also have to admit I feel quite some anxiety when I feel a taxi driver is going to screw me over. This will happen a lot. You have to be the kind of guy that can stand up for himself. Not too social at certain moments I'd say. Perhaps this is also what you learn when traveling longer.

I feel I should have traveled more. Not because I feel this constantly but after reading all this... But then, thinking of the travel I did, I was always happy to come home again.

Pff, trying to justify life choices because of your post while I should be working.

Better to regret things you did than things you didn't?

If you walk the footsteps of a stranger you'll learn the things you never knew you never knew.

So many times, this. I have that exact same feeling when I travel. Big, unfamiliar, cities make me really anxious. Between making travel arrangements, because I don't want to get stuck in a place that ends up being a total dump, or even making plans on what to do with my time when I reach my destination, and interacting with the local "vendors (taxi drivers, tourist-popular places, street vendors, etc).

It takes me a few days in a new place before I can get acclimated and familiar with an area before I can start to relax and enjoy myself.

I, admittedly, haven't traveled a lot and I have only been outside the US on one occasion, but even inside the US I get anxious. I get so worked up over making sure every experience is worth while, sometimes it's easy to forget that the experience, good or bad, is part of the journey and what probably makes traveling so great.

I assume it gets better with practice, and it certainly falls into the category of "Do what makes you uncomfortable."

Go to church, whatever your religious affiliation. My church has great, fun programs for exactly your age. It's where I met my wife and made a lot of great friends.

Travelling is one of the most educational, rewarding experiences you can possibly have.

I would stash my earnings away into an investment, travel the world freelancing with my expertise, discovering new and amazing realities with which to live life.

P.S that's what I'm doing now, 20 odd years later. again.

- Travel

- Have fun

- Meet new people

- Get out of my comfort zone.

Instead, I am going to quit my job and research artificial intelligence full time: coursera, hacking on personal projects and hackerspaces. (And at least 1 hour of sport everyday for social/health). When my savings are blown, I'll try to get a job at numenta or vicarious. If this fails, go back to devweb for a few years, and repeat.

To all the people suggesting having fun and travelling: http://lesswrong.com/lw/jl3/on_saving_the_world/

You are in London, the best place for clubbing and a very nice base for traveling since most of the low cost flights are from and to London.

Check out Hospitality parties from Hospital Records, they come often to A'dam, also parties from RAM Records, Shogun Audio, Jungle Mania, Innovation, and others I am forgetting, this of course if you are into jungle music and drum and bass :-P

Do what you love, be original, don't worry about others trolling and be happy as you seen to be.

BIG UP !!

did I mention travel and be original? :-P

You're young. So young. Don't worry about your friends not wanting to go out so much -- find new ones who do, and who are willing to take you out to bars and clubs to show you the ropes of chatting up strangers, if that's your thing.

That said, were I in your position, I'd be tempted to do the 'freelance around the world' thing. I can put you in touch with someone who's doing exactly that if you like.

You might be interested in splitting your time between a long-term investment and several short-term investments. One example would be buying a house (10-30 year investment) and at the same time developing a bunch of life skills (1-6 month investments). Or travel the world for five years and work on small projects... Mix the things you want to do, don't just settle for one thing :)

In order to meet people, make friends, lovers/partners, and do fun exciting things, you have to spread out into the world and discover/try new things you wouldn't have thought of yourself as being involved in. The one constant I find is that the people I enjoy the most I encountered by accident whilst meandering the random occurrences of meeting new people and trying new things, without any expectations.

Also consider that you're only 25, and than in 5 years you will be a different person, and in 10 years, and 15, etc. It actually doesn't matter what you do, because some aspect of you will evolve over time and your plans will change, which is normal. (For example, five years ago I wouldn't have told you that i'd become a cook or a trapeze artist, or have a long-distance relationship... but people change!)

I am fairly happy with my life, but its just a bit boring and I guess lonely at times. Sometimes finding myself trying to make small talk with people at the gym or in a supermarket as I haven't had any face to face interaction with another human for days at a time! I did go to university and lived in shared accommodation for a number of years and had the time of my life, but since living on my own I seem to have become a bit of a recluse and not as outgoing as I once was. Doesn't help that many of my friends are in relationships/permanently skint and are not willing to go out and do things.

Two of my main clients are located in London and I work remotely from home, both of which have said they would be fine with me travelling as long as I kept within a few hours time difference. Occasionally I am required to attend meetings in London at the cost of around £100-160 for a return train ticket, flights from a european country would probably cost me the same!

My biggest problems are pushing myself to do something new and out of my comfort zone and breaking the ice with new people as I am incredibly shy at first. Oh and not forgetting I have the worst hangovers of all time lasting anything from 2-4 days! haha

Travelling isn't for everybody. Personally I'm a homebody and I felt pressured to travel when I was younger because all the cool kids were doing it. I never enjoyed it, regret it, and would trade the experience for the money back in a heartbeat.

If you really want to get away from it all, then by all means do so and have a blast. Just do it because you want to, not because the internet tells you to.

As for what I would do, well I was in a similar situation to you when I was about two years older than you are now. I worked at a successful startup and rose through the ranks fairly rapidly, but settled at principal developer level for a number of years and never tried to make the jump into a truly senior role. If I was doing it again, I would either stay aggressive in trying to get ahead, or quit and build my own product. Sounds like you've already done the latter though.

I went and had the best time of my life. It really opens your eyes when you see how different cultures live. Made me a lot less shy as well.

If you really don't like it you can always come home early.

What would I do? Well, I was in your situation 10 years ago, and I basically kept doing lots of coding for fun, learning about all sorts of tech stuff, playing video games, and not generally going out, making friends, or what ordinary people might call 'having fun'. But I'm an introvert who genuinely loves being bookish, indoorsy and living on the Internet rather than in real life, so different strokes and all that ;-) If I could dick around on the Internet for the rest of my life, I'd be a very happy bunny.

Ten years on, I don't regret my decisions and I'm married with kids and doing well, although I know more than enough people who did regret not living it up in their 20s and it sounds like you might be someone who wants/needs to do that in style.. so get on with it :-)

I'm watching the comments above me like a hawk for what to do but I'm taking your post as an excuse to shake up my life. BRB - getting plane tickets.

http://www.clipperroundtheworld.com/

The boats will be back in London in a couple of days. Go along and talk to some people who have literally just finished sailing the entire way around the world. Hear about the incredible things they've seen. The wonderful people they met and the amazing obstacles they had to overcome. Most importantly, hear about how much they feel they've developed personally.

I've spent a lot of my life travelling (which is what most people here are saying you should do). I'd highly recommend it but try to not end up travelling as a tourist (foolishly, I did for years). My top tip would be to not travel too much. Go somewhere, anywhere. Live with a local family. Learn the language. Understand the culture. Your life will forever be richer for it.

What about your solo living situation? I'm the same age as you, except living in San Francisco in a house of 60 people. I have a roommate who is 27. If you were in this house there'd be at least 15 activities a week you could join ranging from swing dancing, to making dinner for 20, to big rides around the city, to waking up at 545am to serve food in homeless shelters. You don't need to drag yourself out of your apartment alone, you just ride with the energy of the people you live with.

Suggest you join a share-house, or even fly over to San Francisco to join a larger community (I've flown over from Australia).

I think if you go travelling you'll end up repeating bad habits in each new place because you haven't changed anything about yourself.

I don't like giving advice so I'll just talk about what's worked for me :)

In the last 3 months I got to contract for Microsoft, which meant leaving my apartment and GF in London and having a place rented in Reading.

I'd intended to play a ton of games in the evenings but the internet connection there was terrible, dropped every 3 mins. I took this as an opportunity to do something else and learn a game in real life :p Plus I was a little out of shape and wanted to fix that and make some non-work friends. For me I picked Squash because it's a really demanding game of a competitive nature but it's also easy to practice on your own so I wouldn't be as embarrassed when I played with others.

I did research etc and spent just under a month in the evenings training on my own, then I joined the social squash sessions and later on the league. It's a ton of fun and when you're in friendly competition you naturally gel with peeps. You meet lots of different people too, I ended up building a site for a chem engineer who was setting up his own company.

The funny thing is not only did I make more friends through squash, but because you have something (non-nerdy, I could talk anyone's ear off about dev stuff or DOTA/Street Fighter etc but not everyone is open-minded enough to appreciate my nerdier facets :P) that you can chat about with other people you meet you find they're just generally more interested in you because passion is attractive, even in a platonic sense.

I did other things too but they aren't as pertinent to your situation, like starting to go to the gym with people I liked on my team, learning to ride a motorbike etc, all of which have made me a much more fulfilled person, all of which I wouldn't of even started doing if I hadn't of picked up that first activity.

This may sound a bit touchy feely but looking back, I think what was making me unhappy was that I didn't love myself. That sounds strange but as soon as I started improving and finding my groove everything else was a heck of a lot easier. You sound the same, you're trying to reach for something to change your circumstances and travel is an obvious first manifestation for that, but I'd suggest changing yourself first and seeing if that makes you happy.

You're lucky, you're looking for what to do next and you have few things to stop you going in any direction. You're standing on the precipice of you becoming a more awesome person :)

* Spend your time with quality people

* Build a family

* Be generous, help others

Everything else will work itself out.

I find it's a lot cheaper to rent an apartment than hotels/airbnb, but you would have to stay in one place for a month at a time, which is mostly ok for places with a good subway system.

I was planning to change to the nomadic lifestyle forever, but 3 months later it is getting to be a bit tiring. I find I miss the convenience of having a car, fast pc, and going to the gym. I may just make it more of a once a year thing.

shameless plug for my blog: http://jack.ventures

(cool blog btw!)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place

It looks like you already answered your own question. This part of you is your intuition.

You are in the perfect situation to do what many people yearn to do, but are unable to because of lack of time and money, both of which you seem to have.

Go backpacking in Asia or something. Meet people, drink casually, explore the culture, and work from your laptop on the side. There are so many possibilities, and it is up to you whether or not you capitalize on them while you still can.

As others have said, travel. Specifically, stay at youth hostels; you will meet and get to know many wonderful people from all over the world.

When you stay at a hostel, people will tell you of new and fun places to go, where you'll meet more new and interesting people, and the virtuous circle begins.

At 25 I left my contracting job and spent 4 summer months travelling Europe.

Perhaps my favourite destination -

http://www.lakecomohostel.com/

I spent two years travelling the world while freelancing. I was building iOS apps remotely for companies in the UK. You'll be amazed how far the pound will take you in developing countries.

My advice is to spend six months in each location and try to really live there. Typical backpacking didn't work for me while also working.

Suggestions: Chiang Mai, Medellin, Bali, Berlin (cheap, but not the same kind of cheap as the others in this list)

My email is in my profile if you need any tips/ideas.

And if your friends are settling and you no longer have so much fun with them, never think it's too late to make new friends!

"What would YOU do?"

I'd definitely go travelling. See the world. Understand culture / problems / what drives people.

Suggestion - http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/Hackbase - get yourself to Canary Islands (plenty of cheap RyanAir flights from the UK) and figure what to do next from there :)

We can give you as much permission as you want. But all of it won't matter unless you give yourself the permission.

Some say "just ship", in this case, "just start".

Lots of great advice in this thread. A lot of ideas on where to start. But it will be all for not if you don't let yourself start.

Good luck throwing off the bowlines! ;)

Do a Bruce Wayne Gap Year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7617684

If you are interested in starting another company find a mentor and start building relationships. Above all, eat healthy stay healthy.

I think traveling accelerates the possibility of these events happening.

Also take up dancing classes (salsa is a good choice) and possibly learn to paint/draw.

There's something wrong with the finances of somebody who never took out student loans, has been working for 70 hours a week for five years, has only managed to save $30K, and is not having too much fun.

Also: freelancing for a single client that you used to work for is not steady work. I've never had that relationship last more than a year and a half. Freelancer fault-tolerance requires at least two clients.

I speak from experience.