Thinking about some ADHD crap today, specifically around abruptly shifting interests and how that intersects with community.

As in, there are communities for every one of my special interests. People make friends in those communities. But that only tends to happen for people who stick around consistently and become recognized as regulars. That's just how human socializing works.

For me, though, interest is inconsistent. It's rarely sustained long enough for me to show up as a regular anywhere.

It's recurrent, though, as I rotate through interests: For example, I tinker with electronics and retro computers every few months. Then I'll abruptly switch to writing or music or woodworking or a single video game for weeks at a time. Then, I switch again.

So, I tend to repeatedly (re)appear as a stranger in communities around my interests. And don't make many friends. That's an annoying thing for which I've never found a solution.

Sometimes I try really hard to force focus on a single interest in order to finish something and maybe set down roots in a community and make some friends. But inevitably, the effort to force a focus is exhausting and I just ghost out of it anyway.

Back when we lived in Detroit, the funny thing was my wife and I started making a few friends in the bartender / service industry scene.

Because we went to the same handful of cocktail bars at least once a week and nerded out on booze with the folks there.

So, that was a consistent thing at least. But then we moved across the country and then we had a pandemic...

@TerryHancock I'm pretty bad at staying active if I'm not actively interested in the thing, though 😅 I find it hard to socialize in absence of an interesting object to socialize around

I’ve also found that my best socializing happens in the “hovering around the bbq grill” mode. Which, sure, is a well-ridiculed dude cliche.

But it’s also an indirect socializing mode. We’re not all directing attention intensely at each other. That generates social anxiety for folks like me. Instead, we attend to a neutral interesting object and discuss it. Incidentally, we may relate to each other along the way.

My problem is that the neutral interesting object for me keeps changing shape :blobsweat:

FWIW, I've also heard that "hovering around the bbq grill" is adjacent to "looking chastely at the reflection of one's beloved in the garden gazing ball"

@pdp7 Oh, I've been there for a mech keyboard meetup before! That's a nice venue

@nex3 :oof:​

Annoyed with myself: Ordered 3 things from 3 vendors on eBay using their batch shopping cart checkout thingy.

Realized I'd sent all three of them to my old address. Had to request a cancellation of each order individually, because there's no address change option. Also sent a message off to each vendor to beg for an address change.

One cancelled the order and told me to re-order. One promised they'd change the address when they shipped. The other hasn't answered in 2 days, so that thing is probably gone.

There was one time, just after we'd moved, that I sent a large delivery of booze to our old address.

Luckily, we still owned the empty house. So, I just sat on the front porch when I knew the delivery was coming. When it arrived, I threw it on the back of my bicycle in a very suspicious manner and rode back to the new house.