Do something that has nothing to do with any of this.
True story from my first week an university. I was a typical bright, nerdy guy away from home for the first significant amount of time. I decided that I had to do _something_ to force me to not stay in my room and it had to be something that was going to get me to meet people unlike me.
So I looked around and went for something well outside my comfort zone: ballroom dancing. I had no idea how to dance at all, but you can learn to dance and you dance with women. Also, all the other people there were in a similar situation (some had danced before) but most were doing it to try something new.
I don't know what's going to work for you, but there's something out there.
I'll concur with this on most levels. The change I made was from a slightly different place: boxing. I joined a school that did BJJ and Muay Thai.
It worked out beautifully. After staring at a screen and sitting down for 8-10 hours, I could spend an hour or two getting the shit kicked out of me. Since I lived in the city and was traveling against traffic, it had a chance to die down while I was working out. Aside from the endorphin rush that accompanied the workout and the physical changes that accompanied struggling to the point of immobility 3x/wk, I got a nice confidence boost which stayed with me through most of the job interviews that followed after I relocated. It was like all the panic and nervousness of the week got expelled in the span of six hours. For six months after I stopped (moved across the country for grad school) I could sit through job interviews thinking, "There is nothing this person can do to me physically, mentally, or socially which I cannot handle. This person has no power over me. I am in control. I am the authority."
I might try ballroom dancing when I have the time again, as I think it's more practical from a social perspective than fightin'. (Seriously. The knowledge and confidence to dance wins 10/10 in social scenarios.) Still, try both!
For me, it was tennis. I started playing and fell in love with it. It all began when I was working from home for a startup in another country. I would work and in the evenings, I would quietly slip out to the courts, play for two to three hours, and return back to work. Tennis is an amazing sport, if you play it passionately and properly, and only just for fun. Once I got better, I began looking for local tennis circuits. The coach I used to play with put in my name at a local tennis tourney. It was the first tourney I ever played. And I was jubilated, not only at being able to play a properly arranged tourney, but at realising that what I previously thought that there were hardly any good players around locally was totally wrong. There were many talented players, of all ages, who were just as passionate about tennis.
I fell so much in love with tennis that it became the only thing I was passionate about in life. I dearly looked forward to slipping out of work to playing tennis. I participated in more and more tourneys, and even though I lost, if it was a good match, I felt extremely satisfied.
Last year, I quit my work from home job (which last 4.5 years), mostly because I felt I wasn't getting anywhere working from home. I joined a local startup not too far from where I lived which was working on things I loved. Along with it, I switched tennis clubs and joined a professional tennis club where top-notch players coached and played and where I could find many a good player to play with.
All in all, I think that the advice, "do something that has nothing to do with any of this", is really something you ought to try.
The other piece of advice I'd give is: "Do things that scare you but where you can overcome that fear". I, at least, find that I have great satisfaction from that.
I spent a lot of time hanging out at a salsa dancing club. It was a great way to 1) do something not nerdy 2) meet a lot of women, and 3) get a small sense of what said women are like in short order. You can tell a lot about someone by how they dance and react and behave. I also found it fun. Also, it's enough of an acquired skill that not just anyone can walk in and be good right away, but not so hard that you have to spend years getting any good.
Not sure I agree with the last part - it took me 2 years of weekly salsa lessons to get comfortable on a dancefloor
Having said that, I can't recommend dancing highly enough, it's added an enormous amount of joy to my life. Programming scratches an intellectual kind of itch for me, but dancing scratches a much deeper one
Depends on the kind of place you frequent. The one I went to was perfect in that some people there were very good, but most were average, and people were there to have fun and meet others, not to show off, mostly.
Unfortunately, I tried something similar and failed miserably. I have zero sense of rhythm, and have also been unable to acquire one. I feel much the same way about dancing as Stephen Fry: http://shrik.theswamp.in/2012/09/stephen-fry-on-dancing.html
True story from my first week an university. I was a typical bright, nerdy guy away from home for the first significant amount of time. I decided that I had to do _something_ to force me to not stay in my room and it had to be something that was going to get me to meet people unlike me.
So I looked around and went for something well outside my comfort zone: ballroom dancing. I had no idea how to dance at all, but you can learn to dance and you dance with women. Also, all the other people there were in a similar situation (some had danced before) but most were doing it to try something new.
I don't know what's going to work for you, but there's something out there.