TLDR: grown man with social anxiety and a progressive disease looking for a little guidance.
I'll try not to ramble, but I can split this up into essentially 2 questions. For a little background, this year, at 35 years old I was diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis, which is a progressive disease that was somehow missed my whole life despite constant suffering.
Between that and the end of the most intense relationship of my life so far, I've been doing a lot of redefining of myself and my life over these months. There was a period when I was trying to force myself to "make my life small" and settle down to feel safe and secure, but it made me miserable. I'm done fighting the part of myself that loves adventure, so I now want to go all in on the DN lifestyle, but there are a couple of issues.
I'll also note, I've kind of been living a semi DN lifestyle since COVID. I would live in places like Colombia, Spain, and SEA for a couple months, then return home for a while. But now, I have no permanent residance in the US and sold my car. I'm all in. Job is fully remote, financially I'm great shape. So the questions:
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I have never heard of someone with CF living this lifestyle. For me, with medication my symptoms are pretty much non-existent, but I do have to refill that medication every month. Insurance will not fill any order more than a month because the medication is $25,000 per month (god bless America).
So my question is, does anyone here require expensive life sustaining drugs and still enjoy the lifestyle? How do you handle it? Right now the only path for me seems to be flying home every time I need to refill but that is so insanely restricting. Like if I'm in PH for example, that's 48 hours round trip, not to mention the expense.
I also realize I could do one month in America, one month abroad off and on, but that feels really restrictive if I want to try and really embed somewhere. Not to mention Airbnb is $3000 a month minimum in the US if you want to be anywhere anyone actually wants to be that doesn't require a car. Maybe this is just another sad reality of my disease?
2. Maybe insanely broad, but how do people make friends and build community? I will admit, I am insanely bad at making new friends. I haven't made a new lasting friendship since college. I used to think I was ok with this because I was always in long term relationships, but now that I'm comfortable being single it has left me feeling so lonely and desperate for interaction.
I am ashamed to say that while I'm a well traveled person, I usually do it in a very solitary way, rarely engaging with anyone. A lot of this is down to self confidence, anxiety, and just not having the skills, but it's so daunting because I don't even know where to start. Most advice is like go to a bar or cafe and just...meet people! But I have never approached or been approached by anyone in any bar or cafe ever. How does that even work? When I'm in public my general assumption is that person just wants to be left alone, so keep to yourself.
The extent of my social interaction abroad is usually through bumble. Which is fine, I don't mind dating and spending time with nice women. But I feel like I want more community and lasting friendship building.
That being said, I'm not a complete social idiot. When I get to know someone I think I'm a good conversationalist and can make people laugh, but I just don't know how to get over that hump, especially in international settings.
Hope someone is willing to sift through this ramble and give me a bit of advise here. Cheers.
Edit: I realize my autocorrect consistently changed "DN" to "DM" without me noticing. Corrected in the body, but can't correct the title.