Let me first say that I recognize the fact that this sounds super privileged and I am speaking from my own experiences with the all of the tools I have at my disposal in mind.

I don’t have many real life friends, but when I do hang out with them, it seems like all of our conversations eventually come back to some societal critique (often at the most granular level). Sorta like never ending, conversations popular in academia without really understanding the minutia of said conversations. Comes off “pretentious” to a lot of people unfortunately :/ we all hate hate hate our 9-5s (like everyone I suppose) but I think I’m personally reaching a critical point where I’m starting to value something other than the salary. And the nail in the fucking coffin is that I think that this makes up the majority of my anxiety.

Lol my good friends and I will usually clear out a room by boring ostensibly neurotypical people with our very silly little conversations, but I feel like academia would be where the people who wouldn’t leave would congregate. And this probably sounds a little hyperbolic because we certainly talk about other shit too (lol we can’t not at times), but this is certainly our sports if we’re comparing popular topics of discussion