It is difficult to not look at my life from the past and not feel diminished in some way. The siren song of nostalgia is a difficult to tune resist, as I find myself feeling more isolated and alone than I have in years. I speak with fewer people on a regular basis these days. I have fewer recent conversations in all of my communication channels. I have no weekly events except the one I have laboriously scraped together every Sunday. I barely have the energy to even think about making any kind of positive changes to my life, let alone actually making any changes. I am in a rough patch and the thought that yesteryear was better is a difficult one to deny when I am watching the sun set while I fill up my water bottle for my final hour of work as the building settles into silence and darkness on a Friday evening. I am not the only one working still, but, like me, we all work in isolation and silence, largely unaware of each other’s presence. I do not know their life situations, but a part of me wonders if they, too, have little waiting for them but a trip home and a quiet weekend doing their own things. Sure, I’ll do some grocery shopping and get my weekly takeout before I settle into my apartment for another weekend, but that’s not much of a social life. The events I have this weekend will hopefully keep me from falling into the silence and isolation I’m increasingly familiar with these days, but it’s little comfort as I feel the building’s heat shut off and the temperature begin to drop while I’ve still got work to do.
Continue readingIsolation
Stormy Thoughts The Morning After
Last night, as I settled in for what comfort I could manage while entirely without power (it was warm and humid, I wasn’t able to use any of my sound generators to cover up the noise of my neighbors, and I was entirely without access to my CPAP machine), I wound up spending a lot of time thinking. It’s difficult to avoid when you can’t fill the air with podcasts like you normally do because you need to save your phone’s battery, when your various electronic entertainments are all inaccessible, and when you’ve got no way to position a candle so that reading a book won’t strain your eyes more than your day job of staring at monitors already has. Not a lot to do other than consider spending my tablet’s battery to read or sit and think about what it means to be without power in the modern era. Which is pretty tempting, to be completely honest. I do enjoy a bit of inward contemplation and there’s nothing quite like staring out the window at the unquiet night sky as you consider modernity. As I went to do this, though, my mind already full of thoughts about an impenetrably dark sky, the darkness of a world without city lights, and the slow hum of people doing their best to live on despite the sudden darkness and silence of the world around them, I found out that this little idealized version of my situation didn’t actually exist.
Continue readingPushing Back Against My Loneliness
Last night, I had a call with one of my friends. I think it was the first time I just sat down and had a chat with someone in at least six months (the last time was when I got to see a friend in-person for the first time in years and we met up after a wedding to get lunch and just talk, which was honestly really great except for the fact that I don’t remember half of it because I was so tired that my head was full of cotton). Most of the time when I talk to people, it’s to serve a particular purpose. Sometimes it’s to plan an event, sometimes it’s to play a game together (video or online tabletop), and sometimes its to provide emotional support. Rarely, these days, do I ever sit down with people, in person or on the phone, to just shoot the shit. Which, in retrospect, is probably part of the reason I’ve been struggling with feelings of isolation for a while now. I love talking to people for no purpose other than to talk, but it’s really difficult to do since most people are busy and it’s much easier to plan an activity with other people than to just set aside time to exist with each other in companionable conversation or silence, whichever happens.
Continue readingI’ll Be Home For The Holidays
The holidays are here. Some are already happening and some are swiftly approaching and yet I have no idea what I’m going to do this year. Since I went no-contact with my entire family except my younger siblings, I’ve celebrated with two of them, observed it via discord calls during the start of the pandemic, joined my local friends’ family at their house, and then spent it with those same friends who had to cancel their travel plans due to the nasty weather. I thought I might travel to visit some friends (the ones on the east coast that I’ve drived to visit twice this year) but the thought of going anywhere far away fills me with preemptive exhaustion so severe I had to take a fifteen minute break from what I was doing when I idly considered doing another pair of one thousand mile drives. Sure, I’ve got my longest break from work in years thanks to some extra holidays my employer gave all the US employees and a few days of PTO I have to spend before January nineth (a whole twelve consecutive days), but I REALLY need to take some time to myself. I’m incredibly burned out and I could really use some actual rest. Sure, I’d love to see my friends and I’m sure I’d have a great time visiting them, but it would probably not be terribly restful, regardless of whether I drove or flew. Not to mention it’s a bit late in the year to be making plans like that.
Continue readingIn Memory of Being Unkown
Most of my coworkers have been with our employer for over a decade (one has even been here longer than I’ve been alive), many of them starting on other teams and in other roles before making their way to the Research and Development team for which we all currently work. They’re widely known and respected in the company, to the degree that we’ve struggled to get work done over the past year as our smoothly-operating department has been (temporarily) picked apart to assist other teams who were struggling (mostly for external reasons–2022 was a wild year to work in technology and electronics). A frequent complaint at our watercooler (which looks more like a cozy sitting/dining room tucked away in a corner of our lab than a bland water dispenser) is the number of emails they’re included on and how frequently they’re asked to split their attention to help others within the company.
Continue readingA Piece of Something Greater
As I reflect on the life I’m currently living, one marked by solitude and distance chosen over potential social engagement and closeness due to the risks of the on-going pandemic, I find myself thinking about all the moments in my life that I actually felt like I was a part of something larger than myself. Generally speaking, these moments happened in crowds or as part of some collective action since I’ve never really been one to attach my sense of self to a cause or group identity (like fandoms or social archetypes), and there are far fewer of them than I thought there’d be when I started this reflection. As I’ve worked through it, though, it started to make more sense. After all, my childhood was marked by a sense of being lesser-than, my college years were filled with me attempting to rationalize that sense of self with the way other people treated me (both those who treated me well and those who took advantage of me), and my entire life has been marked by a desire to avoid chaos, crowds, and spaces in which I have no control. It is no wonder I rarely felt like I was a part of something more than myself, though it does hurt a bit to realize how rarely I felt like that in spite of how frequently I sought it out.
Continue readingStealing Zoo Terminology To Talk About Pandemic Isolation
One of my favorite things about having friends in various industries is that most of them introduce new terms and ideas to me that have very specific meanings in their industry. One of my friends is a chef, so I’ve learned a lot of super specific words related to food preparation and the various utensils found in a kitchen. Another friend is zookeeper, so I’ve learned a great deal of terms from that industry and how they’re used for specific purposes. Like “enrichment.” In the context of zookeeping, it is the stuff zookeepers provide for the animals to ensure they live interesting, varied lives so that the animals can stay intellectually and physically stimulated. It has been a wonderful word to have over the past 1.75 years of the pandemic, since it has helped draw my attention to the shortfalls of my life that need to be addressed.
Continue readingBreaking Protocol
“Thank you all for gathering on short notice.” Harry sat in his chair with the light of his monitor reflecting off his glasses. “I know these are hard times, but I’m glad we can still gather quickly as the need arises.”
Harry focused his eyes on his webcam, doing what that guide to video conferencing had told him to give the illusion of eye contact to the people on the call. It was tricky to maintain, but he’d had a lot of practice.
Talking To Myself
Most people
when they chuckle
and
admit
to talking to themselves
offer the
explanation
that they just don’t like
silence
or that they’re
thinking out loud
Me
I do it to
drown out the whispers
in my head
hoping
against hope
that if I can
somehow manage
to talk loud enough
I can ignore them
It
never works
because there is a
slight hint of
insanity
that creeps
into my voice
and a
primal sort of
wild
tautness
to the muscles of my face
that just SCREAMS
of the whispers
hidden behind the
animated comments
and
self-narrative
that rambles out
of my mouth
It only seems
to emphasize
the
silence
outside my head
and the
color within it
I need
to stop living
alone
It’s too quiet here
especially when
I’m
the only one
making
all the noise