I guess this topic is on my mind after playing for four days in a row and not leaving my apartment. Does anyone have little streaks like this? It feels really f'n weird once you even step back out into the real world.

I was grateful today just to even go back to work, and then meet a friend for some beers and a basketball game.

I think I have been getting more socially isolated as I've gotten older, and then turned back to poker as something I could focus on and pursue. However, it's only lead me to spend more time alone infront of a computer not interacting with people.

Does anyone else have this conflict in balancing poker with life... and not being isolated?

If you make solid money, it's okay to me staying a little bit isolated. It is a question of preferencies. If you're frustated of isolation, just try to set up games/hands you want to play in a week/month and then go out and don't play

Well at least you're aware of the dangers of it and seek to address it, where many do not. I think it can be really bad for your life and eventually bad for your poker also.
I think the 'lonely isolated 35+ male' is becoming a problem for society in general.
Man was not meant to be alone.

My biggest fear is to wake up at 50 and realize that I've wasted my best years being alone... Yeah I have this tendency too and I know I need to fight it. It's tough though, especially when you have no incentive to go outside.

I hear ya man. That's the tough part...finding a reason. It makes it way harder. That's why I like having errands to do or a reason that makes me have to be out. It would be cooler if there were more people to just get out and roll with, but ya it gets alot harder once your are past your early 30s to meet people to just hang out with in general.

You can always play more live poker. Or set a schedule for yourself for online poker so it isn't so consuming. I don't know if it still exists but meetup.com and other similar sites might be helpful for you to meet new people with similar interests.

With live poker, I find I'm more talkative and social if its really low stakes because I can focus more on just having fun and socializing, rather than winning. At $1/$3 level, I'm going to get more caught up in focusing and concentrating cause the money matters to me at that game.

Ya, I can try meetup just for meeting people. I've been on it before, but I didn't find it too great for meeting decent people.

One life, experience it to the max, engage with the beautiful people out there.
The world is also at least 20 percent c*nt though, and I've known plenty who ended up drunks, wrecks or broke at 50 just from being around or being with the wrong people. And if someone fell in love with something like poker and got a lot of enjoyment , excitement from it, is that really so bad... Time spent doing something you enjoy is never time wasted.

One of the reasons I quit playing poker for a living was hitting my thirties and feeling the same way OP did.

For me, it wasn't just the isolation, but the feeling that I wasn't contributing to society in a positive way, and that while poker was paying my bills, it it used little of my overall talent.

I think it's possible to overcome this feeling without leaving poker. Maybe take some time to do volunteer for some charity work, take up a new hobby, or take an evening class in something you have always been interested in. You could even get a part-time job for a few hours a week, just to get some interaction and some real world perspective.

FWIW I don't think playing live poker is the answer - sure, you can interact with people, but you still need to understand the difference between isolation and loneliness - Isolation is a physical proximity thing, whereas you can be in a room with hundreds of other people, and still feel lonely.

I see so many people at work I love being isolated at home. I have friends. I go out, and I can be consumed by the need to play, but separating completely from the game for a period really helps. When I go on tilt I get lonely, schedule a lunch with my folks or a buddy I haven't seen in weeks and it's okay. I get a lot of personal gratification from my job though and I joke that, "when I get stressed I go to work to unwind and come home". I feel lucky to have the job I do and yes, for me, isolation can be a choice but loneliness is harder to conquer. I've been there. There's no real "catch all solution" either based on my experience.