MatchboxVagabond wrote:
You can also volunteer to do something of interest. Being OK, or even happy, alone doesn't automatically mean that the other benefits of being out and about aren't relevant.
In a lot of cases the only necessary requirements to volunteer are a clean background check and willingness to commit to doing so for a period of time. Which usually isn't long enough to be a real problem, it's probably less of a commitment than switching jobs is.
Where I live (approximately 30 people in a 70 square mile area), there isn't a lot of volunteer work to do. And certainly, no background checks are necessary here for someone from this area.
There is a food pantry in a nearby town, but they have enough volunteers that the volunteers from the various churches will typically take turns running it for a week or two and then it being several months before their next turn. Also, their volunteers tend to be younger because of the need to help unload medium to heavy boxes of food donated to the food pantry.
At the church, each family would take the job of cleaning the church for about a month and then being off for a year or so until the next turn. That practice has ended -- we now pay someone to come in once a week to clean.