For me, I just don't have any interest in making friends at work. If we happen to get along, then great! Gimme your number and I'll text you memes about this week's House of the Dragon after work. Daemon needs to get the hell outta Luigi's Mansion, am I right hahaha

But outside of those one-off friendships, I just don't have the emotional energy anymore to maintain any meaningful connections with somebody just because we happened to apply to the same LinkedIn listing. Life is too stressful to be thinking about even more people and their problems.

Maybe it's just because of my line of work, but nobody does this job because we want to, we do it because we're competent at it. We're not here because of some shared vision or dream, but because the hiring manager accepted "some college" on the applications. We're only sharing this space as a matter of consequence, not intention. That's not enough for me to form a bond on in a lot of cases.

Maybe if I worked in a field that I was passionate about, things might be different and I might be more open to connecting with people. But otherwise I'm just here to do what I need to pay my bills, and that's it.

And yeah, it can be lonely. That part can suck.