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No one warns you about the quiet.
The changes seemed to come all at once. Shortly after 2020, the world changed in many ways, but in my little corner, I started running a new business out of my home, remote-work was fully adopted, my wife and I were living in a new neighborhood, and our son and many of my friends had moved out of state. I went from regularly seeing people everyday in person, to only seeing people as faces in a grid of squares on my computer screen.
I was more productive than ever in my professional life, and my wife and I were enjoying a lot of quality time together, but there was an underlying feeling of dissatisfaction. It took me a long time to understand why. I was in my mid-forties, healthy, happily married, and satisfied professionally, but lonelier than I’d been at any point in my adult life. I had convinced myself I was just adjusting to a new routine. What was actually true was simpler and harder to admit: besides my wife, there was almost no one I saw regularly, in person, for no particular reason. And it turns out, we humans need that.
The loneliness nobody mentions
Looking back, most of my friendships were built on being near people. The guys from school. People I had worked with. Friends of other friends. People I did stuff with. That works great right up until the stuff stops. The team breaks up, friends become busy with their own families. The job goes remote. Friends move away, and without proximity, there’s not much left to do, no one left to do stuff with.
I’m not sharing this to be gloomy or woe is me. I’m saying it because I think a lot of men are living some version of this and are struggling to realize it and talk about it. The good news is the fix is more practical than it sounds. You don’t have to become a different person. You just need a reason to be in the same room as other people, on some regular basis, doing something you actually enjoy.
For me, that reason ended up being a card game.
“Magic keeps the lights on”
I have always enjoyed games, but I really liked playing games with other people in the room. I played a lot of poker and board games in my 20s and I have great memories of time spent playing with friends. So when I noticed there was a local game store near the new home, I checked it out. Honestly, I wasn’t shopping for anything. I was looking for a connection.
I browsed the store and saw shelves with tabletop games, cases full of cards and tables where customers could play tabletop miniature games, like Warhammer 40k. I asked the guy behind the counter what games people played here. He said, “Magic keeps the lights on.” What he meant was the trading card game, Magic: The Gathering, had a real community at the store. The players who showed up week after week, the store’s regulars, would soon become the connection I was looking for. That one line is what started me down the road of learning to play the game.
Friday Night Magic is what the community calls it. Same night every week, at local game stores around the world, mine included. The first time I went, I didn’t know anyone and barely knew the rules – only what I gathered from YouTube videos. The other players were extremely helpful and patient with me as I learned the game. I lost a lot early on, but was learning, building connections and having a blast. I kept coming back for more.
That part is the whole thing, really. The coming back.
Why a hobby like this actually works
I’ve thought a lot about why this stuck when other attempts to “put myself out there” didn’t, and it comes down to a few things Magic gets right.
It’s social and it’s in person. You sit at a table with real people for hours at a time and give each other your attention. No algorithms in the middle, no comment section, nobody performing. Just a friendly conversation and competitive banter, while helping each other learn something new each game.
It’s recurring and it’s on a schedule. I can’t oversell how much this matters. You don’t have to organize anything or navigate a text chain trying to find a night that works for four different people. Friday Night Magic is just there, every week, same time, same place. Some local game stores will organize play at other times as well. You show up and the community is waiting for you. Consistency does the work when motivation can’t keep up.
I should address the thing you may be thinking about Magic, because I assumed it too. This is not a kids’ game. The game is challenging, strategic and genuinely competitive – easy to learn and hard to master. It’s closer to poker or chess than to anything in a toy aisle, and it keeps your mind working in a way scrolling on your phone never will. The average player is a male in his early-to-mid thirties, and the tables are full of professionals, dads, and guys my age. Magic has also never caused me physical injury, like pulling a hamstring, like when I played basketball in my 20s and 30s. In middle age, a hobby that challenges your brain without wrecking your body is worth a lot.
If the house has gotten quiet
If you’re somewhere in the middle of your life and your house has gone quiet, here’s what I’d tell you. Loneliness isn’t a flaw in your character and it isn’t permanent. It’s mostly a scheduling problem. Somewhere along the line, you lost the standing appointment that used to put you around other people, and no one is going to hand you a replacement. You have to leave the house and go get one.
It doesn’t have to be Magic. It could be a running club, a woodworking class, a cycling group, or a chess night – anything can work. The specific hobby matters way less than the shape of it. It should be in person, recurring, on the calendar, and interesting enough that you’ll want to go back. Find the thing that has its own Friday night, and show up more than once.
If you are curious about Magic, one bit of practical advice. The thing that keeps most men from picking up the cards is the fear of being the guy who has no idea what he’s doing. You can get past most of that at home first. There’s a lot of educational content on YouTube. The publishers of Magic offer a free-to-play online game called MTG Arena, where you can learn to play. I also spent time practicing and learning the current cards on a free draft simulator at www.draftsim.com. It’s a low-cost way to build confidence, so when Friday night comes, you’re playing the game instead of apologizing for needing time to read the cards.
My journey out of loneliness started at a game store, across a table from a stranger, holding a handful of cards I was still struggling to understand. I walked in looking for something to do. I walked out part of a community. In the middle of your life, that’s a trade worth making.
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Photo: A game of Magic in progress. By Pitbark: CC BY 4.0
