Comment by nether

I'm terrified that my lack of social skills is limiting my personal and professional lives. I haven't had close friends in 13 years. My coworkers are middle aged, suburban folks, while mostly nice it gets tiresome explaining what a selfie is or how Twitter works (or having them explain football to me), and our workplace (mechanical engineering) is unusually antisocial. The vast, vast majority of the time we only talk about work because we're in a constant mild crunch. The people I've met via Meetup.com have seemed kind of narrow and were mostly older (i.e. a hiking meetup of 20 people where all they talk about is running/hiking). I despise so many aspects of the tech/startup world that I gave up hanging out at coworking spaces years ago. I've met some good individual out on hikes alone, but I can't hold a conversation or keep in touch to save my life. Is there any experience that I could get into serving as a crash course in social skills? It can be expensive like long-term travel, except I've done enough recreational travel to know that I'm just as nervous in a campsite in Europe as I am in an office in the US. I just want to develop these skills before my social ineptitude becomes permanently ingrained.