The Downside

I am in a very unique position in life, and I don’t quite know how to deal with it.

Nine months after graduating with a BSc in Computing Science, I’ve moved country, got settled in a new apartment, and been hired into a well-paying, rewarding full-time job. This may sound great–and it totally is, mostly–but there is one big challenge that comes with it that I’ve really found difficult: my social life.

I am a young woman in a software development role. I am younger than literally everyone else at work (because I graduated a year ahead of most students in the US), and at least a few years younger than the average age. I am one of perhaps 10% of the women in the engineering department, half of which are managers. Both of these facts are why I’m sure it’s difficult for people at work to relate to me about anything other than work. My 40-hour week and 30-minute-plus commute means that by the time I get home each day, I’m hungry and exhausted, which often means I’m in no mood to go out on the town and socialize. Being a geeky introvert also means that some days, when I interact with a lot of people during the day, at the end of the day I just want to wall myself off from other people with headphones. This doesn’t mean I don’t need someone to talk to.

The other difficult part of all this is that I’m “new” to the area. Even though I grew up near here, I spent three years away, and grew apart from most of my good friends. Most of the friends I feel closest to these days live in Scotland, which means they’ve all gone to bed by the time I get home in the evening. There are only a few people I can count on to be there for me when I need them, in my time zone.

This is not to say I don’t go to (nearly) every social event I’m invited to. I do, and I enjoy it. I am doing my best to meet new people all the time, and it’s fun. But I can only do so much. I can count on there being days where I come home and just want someone who understands me to talk to, and can’t. I would say it’s not such a bad problem to have, as problems go, and I feel selfish for feeling this way, but this matters a lot to me and it’s not going away. Perhaps I have not given it enough time, though I have been away from Scotland for six months now. All I can do is wait, keep cultivating the friendships I have, and hope any new friends I make turn out to be kindred spirits.

When all else fails, I take myself out for sushi.