"This year continued with folks I’ve known for years just dropping out of contact. Calls unanswered, messages unread, numbers disconnected, emails unanswered." This left me sad. A piece of unsolicited advice from someone who maintains friendships well (I hope!)
When you slip up socially, like making an awkward comment - did you do it because you just don't care? Or were you trying to make a well-received comment, and you're just less adept at socializing than you'd like to be?
My guess is that socializing just isn't your strength. But I'm sure you're well intentioned! Very few people try to do things because they want to be stupid. And it hurts when people assume that you're bad at socializing because you somehow want to be bad at it - that isn't true!
But here we have a thing that you're good at (efficient C++) and yet you've made some assumptions about others that feel the same. You "...have to deal with things that are less effecient because someone just didn’t give a damn." Do you think it's really because the people involved don't care? Perhaps they're bad at it. More likely, they have different things they're optimizing for than efficiency. But whatever the reason, the least likely reason is that they don't care about doing things well. Even people who struggle with something typically want to do it well.
I think the OCPD is one thing - but the thing I would work on fixing first is to just assume the best out of others. Friends will drop out of touch with people who consistently assume the worst of them. You need empathy - few people are trying to do the wrong thing. They are doing the right thing given a different set of values; rarely, they're doing the wrong thing because they're incapable. But almost never are they doing the wrong thing out of a preference for not doing the right thing.
When you slip up socially, like making an awkward comment - did you do it because you just don't care? Or were you trying to make a well-received comment, and you're just less adept at socializing than you'd like to be?
My guess is that socializing just isn't your strength. But I'm sure you're well intentioned! Very few people try to do things because they want to be stupid. And it hurts when people assume that you're bad at socializing because you somehow want to be bad at it - that isn't true!
But here we have a thing that you're good at (efficient C++) and yet you've made some assumptions about others that feel the same. You "...have to deal with things that are less effecient because someone just didn’t give a damn." Do you think it's really because the people involved don't care? Perhaps they're bad at it. More likely, they have different things they're optimizing for than efficiency. But whatever the reason, the least likely reason is that they don't care about doing things well. Even people who struggle with something typically want to do it well.
I think the OCPD is one thing - but the thing I would work on fixing first is to just assume the best out of others. Friends will drop out of touch with people who consistently assume the worst of them. You need empathy - few people are trying to do the wrong thing. They are doing the right thing given a different set of values; rarely, they're doing the wrong thing because they're incapable. But almost never are they doing the wrong thing out of a preference for not doing the right thing.