This TED Talk features artist and video game maker Cornelia Geppert, recorded live at TED Salon, Brightline Initiative 2019.

Have you ever felt lonely?

The urge of wanting to connect with people, but you seem to have no one you really would want to contact.

Or it's a Friday night and you want to be with others, but you have no energy to go out.

So instead you sit at home all evening, watch Netflix and feel more alone than ever.

You feel like a monster between humans that know how to function.

This is what loneliness felt like to me.

So I'm an artist, and I process my emotional world by sharing my feelings through my art.

If you share your feelings with someone

and they understand and share those feelings too, you create an emotional and deep connection.

This is why you can be surrounded by hundreds of people, jump from one 10 a day to the next, but still feel lonely.

It's because these deeper connections haven't been made.

So I was an always happy child.

I think we nearly have no single photo of me where I don't smile broadly or laugh or joke around,

and this went on until, well, it's still the case.

But I had many friend groups up until as a young adult.

I moved to another city for my first job as a comic artist.

And like so many young, thriving people all over the planet, I concentrated all my energy into my work life.

But if you spend like 90% of your daily capacity trying to succeed at work,

of course there is nothing left to take care of all the other important aspects in your life,

like your human relationships.

Nourishing friendships as an adult is work.

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