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Originally Posted by ASU2003
So everyone says "be yourself", but what happens when others won't accept you because you don't fit as their typical group member?
I mean in the past 5 years, I have learned more about life and who I am and who I want to be than in the previous 20. But the problem is that I have no group of friends I can call up anymore. Besides working, shopping, and eating at fast food places, almost everything else I do is by myself.
I have tried to come up with as many groups that I can think of and why it doesn't work out.
I would love to find a group of similar people that are fun to hang out with. It is what is missing from my life, and finding them is the second half of my two goals for this year. (The first is to get my life in order and organized, and I have been making good progress on that).
I guess the first thing is to define what I would want to do with a group of friends. Probably barbeques, mountain biking, camping trips, poker nights, road trips,...
How did you find people to hang out with when you moved to a new city? Has anybody else found any good groups? Or how do you go about forming a group of people that would all want to do something?
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What I'm going to say is going to seem both mean and complimentary, so please bear with me.
First of all, your assumption that nobody likes you, while probably exaggerated, has an element of truth. Just reading your post gave me the impression of someone that I would rather not spend time with. You come across as needy and insecure.
I'm going to infer from your post that you're around 25. What makes you so sure that you've "found yourself?" That's a poor term for a process that never really ends. You don't lift a cushion on your couch one day and suddenly, shit! that's where I've been the whole time! Discovering yourself is as much developing your interests and constantly breaking down and rebuilding your mindsets and attitudes as it is discovering some inbuilt predispositions and coming to terms with them.
These groups that you've attempted to quantify, they're artificial constructs that exist as obstacles only in your mind. Sure, there are cliques and groups that are based on common interest, that's the natural order of things. But to assume that you're some puzzle piece in search of the right spot to fit in suggests a very immature understanding of life. I have friends in the military, friends who are pot smoking liberal hippies, friends who like cars and friends who like interior decorating. The common thread that places them in the same group is that they all have something that I find worthwhile and they see something worthwhile in me. This isn't high school.
More than anything, you need to be more confident, not just that you can accomplish things, but that you're okay the way you are. If you don't feel that way, you need to ask yourself why. Despite all the P.C. bullshit floating around these days, everybody is not a winner, being unique is not a virtue in it's own right, and you do not necessarily deserve to be accepted.
As harsh as that sounds, it's not an attack against you personally, it's an appeal to introspection. Find something you have a passion for, pursue it, excel in it, and you will find that people naturally gravitate to you.
I really believe that this will work for you, and I truly hope you find a great bunch of friends that can appreciate what you bring to the group.
P.S. - If you look at groups of people, there is always one or more people that seem to know everybody. Social groups are not uniform sets of people. Different people serve different roles within the group. Seek out the individuals that tend to serve as an anchor point for more than one smaller group of friends, and get to know them. Get under their good graces and you've effectively validated yourself to a much larger group of people.
I could write about this all night, but we're veering towards political engineering and social manipulation, and we're trying to win you a couple friends, not overthrow a government.