I could have written this comment above. One of the problems lies in the fact that &quot;smart&quot; means different things to different people. Firstly, it usually seems to take on the meaning of hard-science smart and, with that, one often finds specialists. I live in a city where every other person I meet literaly has a PhD (or two) but what am I going to talk about with them regarding particle physics or string theory?<p>If I were to call myself smart, I&#x27;d say I&#x27;m humanities smart, ie a generalist, ie utterly and insatiably curious. How many others in life have I met like me? Maybe one. That&#x27;s it, and he&#x27;s a DN so I don&#x27;t get to see him much.<p>We also have to factor in lifestyle. I&#x27;m a VA and thus I&#x27;ve moved many times in my life so this doesn&#x27;t help with the situation. For the last decade, I&#x27;ve accepted way less pay and less hours so that I can have the free time necessary to learn all the things I want to learn - long-term goals, if you will. As a trade-off (and I gladly do it), I live abroad because that&#x27;s when quality of life goes way up and cost of living goes way down (most of the non-native English speaking world already lives this way, IMO).<p>In the end, I&#x27;m curious enough to take up my own free time, but since I&#x27;m also not a shut-in, I seek out ways to socialize with interesting people. The kicker is that most of them are travelers&#x2F;expats, so they move too.<p>Recently I met a guy who is both nice and available (even though he moved away the other day), so we&#x27;d hang out quite a lot. He didn&#x27;t have to share my interests or be a generalist or anything. He just had to be agreeable and available, and this surprised me a bit, though I&#x27;m not sure why. Not be an a-hole and say &quot;I&#x27;m free, let&#x27;s do something&quot; can be a powerful motivator.