Here's something to consider.

Being lonely by myself hurts. Being lonely in a group of people hurts more. Learning about algebraic topology doesn't hurt.

I think it's a bad idea for people to be by themselves, but I can more than empathize with the "I would rather not" sentiment in this thread.

If I feel lonely and isolated, I am less inclined to be creative. If I am healthy and socially active, I feel more motivated to work harder and create.

I have wasted so much while being alone and while being very social. It's a vicious thing but all I can do is improve my habits and seek out balance.

I really like this explanation. I can see a lot of truth in it from my own childhood.

Also, "lonely" is different from "alone".

Being lonely is being alone and being unhappy about it.

If you're alone but you're perfectly happy about it, you're not lonely, you're just alone.

Since the world is dominated by extraverts who feel lonely whenever they are alone, it is not surprising that these two terms are often used interchangeably. But to a raging introvert like Newton, they can have completely different meanings.

If you have a creative personality, a source of income, and an internal source of validation then, yes, social time is time wasted.

You don't think there's anything more to life than supporting yourself and being validated in your creativity?

I agree these things are wildly important to a happy life. I still think there is more though.

I had fun and socialized a lot more in a long time ago. Don't have much to show for it now and kinda wish that I spent the time differently now.

People disappoint; my computer rarely does.

Also I would be more willing to socialize more today but finding like-minded people is kind of hard. Finding like-minded people of the opposite gender harder still (at least where I live).

FWIW, this sounds like you agree with eunoia that there's more to life than supporting yourself and being validated in your creativity.

And it sounds like you're not getting everything you want from life, and if that's the case, you have my sympathies.

Damn man, not sure how I should respond. Thank you? Don't worry though loneliness isn't so bad once you get used to it.

I'm actually on vacation now and spent most of it in my room. Rented my first VPS, figured my way around Docker, set up nginx as a reverse proxy, kept tabs on my auth logs and noticed a lot of ssh login attempts from Chinese IPs. These are all firsts for me and I'm having fun. I don't think I'd trade those experiences for just to hang out with people who couldn't give two hoots about any of the things I'm interested in.

Ideally I'd love to share those experiences with others but if the choice is pretending to care about whatever topic I don't care about just for the sake of socializing and being alone and doing things that interest me, I'll take the latter every time.

You should try to spend your next vacation in a nearest city with a hackerspace, you will find like-minded people there.

http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/List_of_Hacker_Spaces

I think that the key to socialising is taking genuine interest in other people, not "pretending to care for the sake of socializing".

I often find myself genuinely disinterested in other people where I live. I live in Somaliland and people love to talk local politics here. I don't get involved in it anymore because it's not really about politics but tribalism. It's not about right or wrong but just blindly defending whoever you're tangentially related to. I'm actually quite worried how children I have will end up if raised here.

I'm genuinely interested in people here on HN. In people I see presenting conferences I watch. In people who share my interests. I don't believe I can manufacture genuine interest. It's supposed to come naturally. However, if I don't even try to at least pretend to care then I will literally not talk to anyone for large portions of time.

Thanks for the advice though.

I would say that by and large it's actually the social people who get lonely. They need the acceptance of others in order to feel good about themselves. Newton had his God and his work. Sure, there's 'more to life' but bear in mind that by any reasonable measure his work was full of life and, logically, every choice he made precluded other choices. We're all the beneficiaries of those choices and I expect they were intensely meaningful to him.

That's a matter of personal preference. I have never been in a relationship and don't currently have any friends, and I'm perfectly happy this way. Life is what you make it.

First of all, it's perfectly possible to waste time alone.

A lot of social interaction is, however, a waste of time indeed.

Waste in the sense that if you could take the net sum of the learning and the enjoyment you would get from it, minus the effort (in particular if you lean towards the I end of the spectrum), depending on the kind of people you have the luck or misfortune to surround yourself with, you could easily go into the red.