Losing interest in going out / doing things away from home?

Nope, you're the only one.

Get a dog, son. Your dog will reintroduce you to life and to new people.

That's normal aging, OP.

I’m old and arthritic, and it got worse during the pandemic. I hardly ever want to go out. I don’t find being alone a bad thing. I never really have, and other people are more annoying to be around than ever.

I have been feeling the same way. There are too many people flooding hiking trails, not leashing their dogs, not abiding by leave no trace. I dread getting on a plane these days. My doctor suggested that I take mini vacations in my city or state, but it’s challenging since I have a couple of pets.

I was in a bad way after my husband died. However, this year I have started to get out and about. I’ve done a bit of traveling-which I have always loved-and started reconnecting with some of my oldest and dearest friends.

Life is short and incredibly fragile. I intend to enjoy it as long as I can.

I am the same way. I think it’s just a part of getting older (I am 62). I would rather just stay home with my little dogs, or at least not go very far.

I moved back to my hometown with my partner last year. Working from home. I definitely would like to get out more but not enough to make a lot of plans with people. If I'm not in control of when I arrive and leave someplace I don't like it. I'd much rather meet someone for dinner at a restaurant than have them over to our house. Who knows when they'll leave? I used to travel internationally frequently. Now not since Covid. I miss it and I don't miss it. I love nice American hotels and resorts especially ones I can drive to. I have to fly to West Coast for work and dread it. More and more, I am a homebody and starting to feel myself settling in for the winter. I need to make more of an effort.

Meh, if it isn't making you unhappy, I don't see anything wrong with it. A lot of people just frantically do do do. There's a lot to be said for a slimmed down, minimalist life. Cooking your own food is typically healthier than eating out which is loaded with salt and fat. Walking around where you live is healthier than taking the car and plane to places (pollution).

I used to love travel but after a couple years working from home I get stressed when leaving on vacation for a while. The stress of navigating a new place, finding food, etc., irritates me. My partner worked through the pandemic and he doesn’t have this problem.

Not an ageing thing. I've had this for years, all through my twenties, and I'm thirty now. Partially low self compassion, partially being raised and groomed as a people-pleaser and a 'family first' type, partially the aftereffects of a spell with bad (prescription) drugs, partially just an anxious disposition with a tendency to overthink and be neurotic and care too much what others think or do. It makes me not trust new situations or new people. and feel unsafe out of doors.

^oh, and I own a dog I walk daily and volunteer in my community already, before anyone tells me to get out more and that I'm a lazy Millennial. Am aware I have a lot of issues and a precarious life in a lot of ways (no social safety net, poor resilience and coping skills etc.), but I'm taking it one day at a time. Do welcome advice though.

IMO, it's normal to lose interest in traveling, esp. airplane travel. Covid was the final nail in that coffin, for me.

Travel is also expensive. A few years ago, I moved away from my family & most of my friends. It had been mostly me doing the traveling (to spend time with people). A friend (who I used to travel to spend time with) asked me how much it had been costing me to travel and I told her. I think she never truly wanted to know.

Travel is also just a hassle. I usually park at the airport (for trips less than a week). I once came back from a trip, at night, to a dead battery.

I’m a different person post covid. I used to love going out, going to clubs and holidays.

Now holidays give me severe anxiety, and the desire to go out is no longer there.

When I caught covid last month, I stayed at home until I was negative and I didn’t even miss going out.

I miss who I used to be.

Atomised society+overcrowding and overpopulation+no communities+consumerist individualism+pandemics.

We're on 10 acres fenced and gated. Heaven.

It’s the normal aging process - you can’t expect to have the same interests throughout your life.

[quote]Losing interest in going out / doing things away from home?

Happened to me at birth.

[quote] Travel is also just a hassle.

Yes!

I don't take entirely the opposite position, but for me the lesson of Covid was to say yes to more things. While I have always been capable of being quite happy at home, I also enjoy the stimulation of a change of scene, of doing something or nothing in the company of friends, of going to a concert, exploring a city, new food, new places, new things to see, new people to meet... Covid robbed us of that luxury, but also reminded me of its importance. I say yes to most anything now.

I just turned 69 two days ago. Earlier this month I used my frequent flyer miles to go to Lison and Madrid with a layover in Dublin and had a great time. Lisbon is a slow paced gorgeous city. My favorite part of Madrid was not the Prado but the regional park next to it, where people walked their small dogs, no pit bulls! There were cat houses for the feral cats in the park. On to separate occasions I observed men feeding the kitties.

Before this trip, I was leery of traveling with COVID still around. I was one of the few people with a mask in the airport and on the plane. Much to my surprise, no one wears a mask in Europe except on public transit in Madrid.

I was glad to get home, sleep in my own bed and be with my cats, but that trip was great.

Sometimes we get in a rut. I feel I may only have a few more years to do long distance travel and walk all over the place (I noticed I try to avoid stairs) and want to enjoy it.

The idea that we need to travel to be happy and fulfilled is mostly a sales pitch. The more time and freedom you have in your "real life", the less you feel the need to escape.

Yes. I would have described myself as a total extrovert but learned to enjoy my own company since I was forced too due to COVID.

Perhaps it’s partly due to purchasing a home last year. I enjoy being here. We also have a pool. The house was built inn1948.

Winter is coming although it feels like it has arrived. I don't like going out in the cold and the days are getting shorter. Wake me up when spring arrives.

R22 knows the score.

Who tf travels to be happy (apart from the cruise boys)? We travel to learn and to broaden our horizons.

I think it’s a perfect storm of all the demotivators and I’m experiencing it, too. Good luck!

This is me all over, OP. Between December 2019 and March 2020 I was on five continents (did a cruise around South America and then an African safari that went through Europe and Asia.) Since then I haven't even left my home COUNTY. I've probably bought fewer than 10 tanks of gas in the past two years. I haven't slept anywhere but my own bed either.

But next week I'm finally going to venture out and drive 8 hours to visit relatives for Thanksgiving. And I will be staying in a hotel. I'm still a bit nervous about the whole thing, but I'm going to do it.

adulthood is like dog training but you are both the dog and the trainer and also it doesn’t work and is bad

it’s only about the little treats and walkies at the end of the day

Have never even had an interest in going out, never did it as a teen or college kid (tbf I rarely got invited either. Don’t know what it even feels like to have friends or somewhere social to go. Is that a normy thing?

I enjoy going out but there have been times where everyone is on their phones and it's like why bother? I could've stayed home in my sweats and watched Barbara Thornedyke be a cunt.

Yes, I have lost interest in going out but I do take some walks in the neighborhood. I believe it's part pandemic, part aging. I drove 9 hours to a travel destination in the spring. However I haven't made it out to our local mountains to view the foliage which is something I try to do every year.

My mother wants me to go with her to London to see the Xmas lights and I'm like...how do I get out of this.

More and more I find Im having to force myself to do the things I used to love doing. I keep thinking its a temporary thing,but it just drags on and on. Conversely,I find myself not wanting to do anything because I feel Im forcing myself.

I don't really enjoy the outdoors anymore except for the ocean ( which unfortunately I don't live nearby). But simple nature walks do nothing for me whatsoever. I get no joy from seeing fall foliage or whatever. And I'm much more sensitive to cold than I once was. I used to be really tough when it came to chilly weather.

I loved having a snow storm this weekend so I have a good excuse to stay home and be a hermit.

When you're a kid you have to go out to do stuff because your parents/family are at home. Later on, you have your own home but the mind fucks you up by thinking you have to be "going out" to have a life. You don't.

What is this "post-pandemic" of which you speak, OP? It's still very much with us. Every time I start to think I really have to get out and do more it surges again, and every time that happens there are fewer and fewer mandated protections (masks, social distancing, etc).

So apart from the vaccines, which can prevent serious illness in most people but aren't great at stopping you from getting Covid, we are actually worse off now than at the height of it.

The last building I lived in was very old and some of the residents had lived there for many decades. There was one woman who hadn't left the building in over 40 years. She had people come to her, and had everything delivered before that was a thing. She died in her apartment right before the pandemic and then it was sold.

To those who talked about staying home more as part of the normal aging process never lived in New York City. I am 58 now but I routinely attended the Opera, theater, NY Philharmonic, various ballet companies, jazz clubs and all the top art exhibitions.

Those places were packed with people in their fifties sixties, seventies and eighties. Well not anymore.

One couple, (ages 79 and 80) that I became friendly with returned to Manhattan last week. The husband emailed me. He said there were many empty orchestra seats at the Met. The Sondra Radvanovsky recital at Carnegie Hall was better attended but still, empty seats were quite visible. The people in their age range were noticeably few and far between.

Now that entire generation of still home and are not going out. For NYC, that's huge.

Travelling is just too hard now, with all the delays and cancelled flights and out of control people around you. The cost/benefit ratio doesn't favour it for me right now. I don't have the energy to get up early for flights or trains and run around all day. As far as seeing people - just about everyone I know is dealing with a personal crisis affecting them or their loved ones; many are affected by the financial or physical effects of Covid or current high inflation or mortgage stress due to rising interest rates.

Everything is better during the week.

A trip to the museum on a Monday afternoon. A dinner at Tuesday evening. Catching an early movie on Thursday morning.

Fly on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Saturdays, if you can — those tend to be the best days to travel. Avoid Friday, Sunday, Monday, Thursday.

You'll enjoy hiking on a weekday so much more than on a national holiday or the weekend.

After one has seen and done most everything , going out gets BORING.

[quote]After one has seen and done most everything , going out gets BORING.

Yes, of course. But beyond that, who isn't tempted to stay home and relive memories of narrower waistlines and fuller heads of hair and when you could still have stood a chance of wandering to your neighborhood gay bar and pulling a fuck with a new stranger? And those walls lined with the back catalogues of the Golden Age of TV... who's going to re-watch to re-watch the Designing Women, Golden Girls, Laverne & Shirley, LA Law, The Facts of Life if you don't?

Getting a cat just makes me want to stay home more

R40, for every one of those people, there was at least one like the woman in R39. New York was/is full of people who never leave their apartments, or, if they do, they never go further than a few blocks. It's so easy to get things delivered, and everything you need is within a very short walk.

I seem to have no interest since the pandemic of going out as much. I live in LA and everything right now seems overwhelming. Every day another shooting in a public place, another story of human beings being shitty to each other, another day of hearing about Trump and Maga, another day of worrying about money because everything has gone up except wages.

It just seems like it's not really worth dealing with other people anymore. The world went to shit under Trump and it doesn't feel like it's ever going to be the same as it was before him. The idiots of the world are emboldened and it feels like every day I emerge from my house, a bully might be there. So I'd rather stay home, safe and warm, turn on my Virtual Reality headset and pretend that THAT is the real world and this one is the fake one.

All of a sudden i got a bunch of invitations over the last few days. I really wish they wouldn't invite me as I to do not wish to go anywhere, especially if there are a lot of people coming to these occasions. Now i have to find ways to decline or be a no show.

[Quote]To those who talked about staying home more as part of the normal aging process never lived in New York City.

True. It's nearly impossible to stay in one's little $1.5 M white box when there are constant renovations in the building. jack hammers. Plus the thumping from the neighbor's speakers, the blasting TV from the 80 year olds upstairs.

One is obliged to seek peace somewhere, anywhere else. Then somebody pushes your aged ass onto the Subway tracks.

am currently snuggled in my bed with chocolate and tea and a football match on streaming. it's a monday afternoon. don't give a shit if i should be outside, it's fucking raining and i've got no money and there's nothing to do/i have no-one to do it with. so this is genuinely nice for now

If you’re under 35, it’s depression/social anxiety. I’ve gone through phases - with Covid coming at the perfect time when I wanted to be in the country living alone. Got sick last year - near death - and rebounding from that made me realize I don’t have a lot of time left and I’m going to make th e most of every day. So now I’m LOVING being in the city NYC and engaging with life and people and returning to “normal”. I’ve done a ton of travel too.

It can go in cycles - but I have also realized that my late 40s “I don’t want to do anything but stay home” period was in part depression. Nothing like a life threatening disease to give you a kick out of your self pity/anhedonia and make you get back out there and appreciate you’re not going to be here forever. Also post-50, I feel like there will come a time when I won’t be able to get out and travel, get around easily, go to bars, hear ok, not be in pain. So I’m looking at my 50s as the “grab the last chance” part of life

The only time I leave my house is to the grocery store and the park for a short walk. When the pandemic hit I thought I would hop on a plane as soon as it was over but now I have NO desire to put myself through that ordeal. I don't need it anymore since I no longer care about clogging social media with pictures of myself in front of the Parthenon or some random Buddhist temple. At first I struggled with my lack of interest and thought it might be depression, but even depression can be a necessary pause in activities that have become ritualized and mechanical.

I finally bought a house a few years ago and at first I hated the responsibility and thought I had made a huge mistake but then, very gradually, I realized even with all the hassles, there's no place like home.

R22 speaks truth. Most people don't travel for any kind of mind-broadening, life-enriching purpose. They travel so that they can tell other people about their travels in a game of consumerist oneupsmanship posing as sophistication.

^^ that's ridiculous. Perhaps you mean to say most Americans travel for these inane reasons, but I doubt even that is true.

Depression has been affecting me lately. I was supposed to go to a company luncheon on Friday but stayed at home and said I was sick. I really don't want to be around anyone. Good thing I work remotely. No one knows my mental health is declining.

R38 You are a twit, thousands are not dying every day like it was, you are a nincompoop and quite stupid too. And so are the people who up voted you.

It's the early dark and drawn in nights that get me. I'm supposed to walk my dog now, but I'm eyeing the window and the sun's just gone down, and it's so icy to boot. Just do not want to venture out.

[quote][R38] You are a twit, thousands are not dying every day like it was, you are a nincompoop and quite stupid too. And so are the people who up voted you.

R56, I am in Australia. Thousands never died every day here: in fact at the point when vaccines were made available the TOTAL number of deaths was still under 1,000. The total death toll currently stands at over 10,000 because of the easing of restrictions after the vaccines were introduced. (Stats from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.) There were 37,000 reported cases of Covid in NSW alone last week, and as we know, reporting is now much rarer than it was earlier. So the pandemic is by no means over, and things are demonstrably worse than they used to be because people are behaving as though it is.

So I am not stupid, but you remain rude.

The only way travel.works now is to.go to one interesting place and stay there for two weeks. No more exploring a region moving around every two or three days. See Vienna. Skip Bratislava.