I've (33M) lived a pretty solitary life since middle school since my military family moved around every few years and I stopped making the effort. I still had some "friends" in school because we were together 8hrs a day, 5 days a week but nothing strong.
I would hear how people were meeting up over the weekends on Monday and did feel a bit jealous back then ngl.
During uni I was running between work and classes so paid no attention to making a social life. I was friendly with course mates and few of us were tight when it came to working together on projects but nothing outside of academics.
After grad I worked in an office for about 6-7 months and it was all 40+ yo so didn't get too close with them either.
Since then I've been working remotely. I kept telling myself it's better I focus on my career than running around with other young ppl. I knew it was a coping mechanism but also I had no idea how to change the situation so I kept grinding.
Recently I've realized I've hit my professional and financial goals and pretty much on auto-pilot.
Now have all this free time and I'm missing people to spend it with. I go out to boardgame meetups and hiking groups but have no idea how to start a conversation, what to talk about. My mind goes blank half the time when someone is in front of me. Feel like a 5yo in front of 20-30yos.
Anxiety is at all time high with how I wasted my early years when could I have had a chance to observe and learn from peers, and practice with people around, and now no one wants to give a chance. No one attends events consistently, people have partners and kids keeping them busy etc.
How do I build a consistent social life at this age – what does it even look like?