Libraries and bookstores.
You definitely have a better chance at meeting interesting people in libraries at bigger cities than in smaller towns.
I lived in one city where the public library WAS the college library, filled mostly with younger people, a couple floors high, and populated enough that you can run into someone doing a dissertation on a subject that you're also studying. Okay yes, they're there to research and do a report but: I mean, who the Hell actually enjoys writing a report?
I'm a nerd, and even
I don't like writing reports.
Another city I lived in had a library to it which was simply where all the homeless people and crust punks hung out. Have you ever had a conversation with the homeless or crust punks? I mean, habits aside, their life story and perception is an interesting thing to delve into. It teaches you to break down the walls of your own perception and discard your judgment of other people. Yes, they are troubled people, however they are
people. If humanitarian concerns interest you, there's literally an entire field of social study based around this alone.
Okay, so where do you meet business owners and people that actually make money? They're often at trade shows, which usually takes a bit of money to get into in the first place. There's some boards/forums specifically for that kind of a thing as well, and you can find plenty of ways to better your finances through attempting to develop a better relationship with your manager. Not all managers a bad, a lot of them are, but not all of them. I'm an awesome manager, or I try to be at least.
. No drugs or alcohol for that conversation with those types of people though. Even though everyone there is likely a functioning alcoholic or has some sort of addiction, that conversation isn't considered appropriate in professional business meetings and/or conversations. I used to work a for a father/son duo that were multi-million dollar entrepreneurs, I invested countless hours into talking to them about management when they made me a manager. "Learning the ropes" as they call it.
That field of work though, in that company and location specifically, didn't drug test. It was in a college town when I was in my early 20's, and we were in the "tobacc0" industry of wholesale distribution...in other words: I was the supplier to the corner stores for cigs, wraps, pipes, pipe cleaners, cheap booze, and pretty much everything you'd expect college kids to be into for experimentation that was borderline legal. Fought the feds? Yep, been there, done that too...I've seen some pretty cut throat **** in the world of business for only being 30 and working mostly minimum wage kinds of jobs. My thing is: I genuinely don't want to be a business owner. I literally can't afford to start from in the hole because I was
born in the hole (err...that's an accidental double entendre, I'm sorry!)
Anyway, the TL;DR version of it being:
Meeting people can be easy, meeting the
right people however, is much, MUCH harder...I meet the wrong people every ******* day, for example. Okay yeah, I smoke weed and on very rare occasions (the Equinoxes specifically) I take psychedelics but that's just because I'm what you'd call a Stargazer.
Have you ever seen The Wolf Of Wall Street?? I feel like most people want to be that and also hate the idea of that basically at the same damn time (yes, I did just drop that bs reference).
So where do I land as an introverted INFJ, Cancer, straight cis white male when it comes to meeting people??...I don't...
People meet me, I don't meet people. That's pretty much always how it has been.
If that looks like a lack of confidence and high strung social anxiety disorder coupled with crippling clinical depression, that's probably because it
is exactly that....I can fake being extroverted, for pretty much a period of 8 - 12 hours. JJUUSSTTT enough to get me through a long work day, or a long visit to a friend I actually sincerely, genuinely care about.
Irony being that I emotionally feel like the tail end of the Mortiis song Monolith:
"Here I stand, alone
My soul has turned to stone
Half my kingdom to
Him that helps me through"
My nails are...literally digging into the walls around me, at this point...though the ironic thing is that: I'm the one that built these walls! >_< I don't need further conflict in my life, I'm clearly conflicted enough...
I mean I have seen some seriously...seriously ****** up ******* **** in my life...enough to warrant me seeing a counselor except I can't afford it. Enough to talk to cops except they'd probably jail me too. Enough for nobody to want me, but enough for me to figure out how to survive literally entirely on my own at any length of extremity short of basically having my arms and legs rot off from some infectious disease which I hope I never have to suffer.
That's where I stand when it comes to meeting people, and why I kind of don't really meet people in person these days. Online is much safer, if I can't handle it I can literally just shut my laptop and walk away and go watch a movie, or play a game, or something of the like.
