I get all my intelligent conversation at work

[QuestionsorComments]

I don't know how I've managed to get to this point, but I'm a professional person with professional colleagues. I get on well with colleagues and we have some interesting conversations, but they've never moved to being friends outside work.

Outside work, I live in the deprived area where I grew up. My friends work in care homes, are receptionists and cleaners. Lovely people and I very much enjoy their company, but they're not well educated and they're not generally interested in current affairs etc. That's not being unkind, it's just how it is.

However, I am considering retirement after a period off with ill health. I went in to meet with my boss last week and it was lovely to have a proper grown up conversation with someone who is interested in the important issues.

I used to have great political debates with DH, but he died.

If I retire, where am I doing to find that?

Have you looked at meetup to see what groups are near you? Does the local library run classes or book groups. I guess it's about getting into places where you meet people with similar interests.

Volunteering at cultural venues etc may be another route.

Also, could you invite a work person to a social thing? Start laying the groundwork for a post-work friendship.

When you retire join your nearest U3A; you will have a choice of groups depending on your interests and will get all the stimulation you need.

Volunteer, or go into local politics!

I can understand. I think it isnt at all unreasonable to want and indeed need this in your life, so now it is about finding new ways to get.it

Volunteering, evening classes, local councillor, ... I am guessing this is why a lot of professionals actually go back to working on and off after they retire. My Granny was a GP and I think she worked on and off for a decade after she had her retirement party and when I visited her in a nursing home for the last time (just pre pandemic) her table was covered in well thumbed copies of the BMJ etc.

What's interesting to me is that you seem to have a hard and fast division between your professional life/workplace and your friendships is this something you've consciously fostered? Have you ever tried to take relationships with your colleagues outside the workplace, or did you not want to why not? Don't you have old university friends/friends from when you did your professional training?

I don't myself find in my life that I can only have in-depth conversations with people of my level of education (four degrees, originally from a poor WC area, no one in my family stayed in school after the age of 15 before me) -- my PILs are now very elderly and had unskilled manual jobs all their lives, but they are hugely interested in current affairs, local, national and international, and are well-informed and lively conversationalists on politics.