I don&#x27;t know whether your post was meant as a catharsis or an avenue for feedback.  But here comes the feedback....<p>I can relate with your story. In the last two years I&#x27;ve been learning development while working in a business type role. Nobody at lunch gives a crap about webpack or Node.js, nor do my housemates, and while on dates I&#x27;ve concluded it&#x27;s best not to bring up what items I&#x27;ve recently starred on Github.<p>So each day passes with a dozen unspoken conversations. That&#x27;s absolutely fine, I&#x27;ve nobody to bounce my love of modern classical music off either.<p>That doesn&#x27;t make me love those interests less. This right here is a community I&#x27;m part off, so is the &#x27;Tech peeps I like&#x27; twitter list I follow, so are the comments below the newest codrops article, and the discussions on Github pull requests I made, and the developers I support on patreon.<p>Truth be told, having been to meetups, there&#x27;s a good chance you&#x27;re not missing a whole lot. &quot;Hey isn&#x27;t [topic of meetup] great?&quot; &quot;Yeah I really like [latest update]&quot;  &quot;Me too&quot; [beer consumed] &quot;Great, bye&quot;.<p>I&#x27;m being flippant. The point is I think you&#x27;re ignoring the community staring you in the face and while I understand your perspective you should realise that these barriers are mostly self-imposed. Anxiety, self-esteem issues and imposter syndrome won&#x27;t disappear just because you&#x27;re in the city or because a meetup is closer than a 1 hour train journey away.<p>So rather than assuming doors are closed before even trying to open them, why not apply for a job in the city, create a pull request and travel to that meetup in Melbourne, no matter how &#x27;taxing&#x27;?