Unlike extreme extroverts, I am an extrovert who does well for a while, then I absolutely must be away from people. It turns out, as all the memes about Gen X are saying, I was 100% prepared for staying away from people and doing stuff at home. (So funny, as I was writing this, my supervisor from the orchestra called to check in and we talked about this exact same thing.)
I definitely cycle, but overall, I feel great, my needs are being met, and I’m not totally isolated. Somehow all my pants are shrinking, but that’s okay, too. I actually feel safer than a lot of people because now, people are out of my personal space and not touching me. I have no interaction with old white men, really, and that was a root cause of anxiety and stress for me.
A day for me entails this: I watch t.v. and movies, I study German, I text friends when I feel lonely, I read (too much on the internet, but it’s fine!), I occasionally clean, and I meet with a couple of German classmates for speaking practice. I was down to one student before all this, and we only meet twice a week for an hour now, so I get a little more contact and connection that way.
I miss the gym pretty badly, because I have some very concrete goals I am trying to reach, but, I don’t miss some of the people at the gym, so even that balances out. I just need a couple more dumbbells (which have all been wiped out everywhere online!) and I could do most of what I need to here. I’m doing Puppercise with Ripley! and posting photos for my own entertainment, mostly, and to keep my mental game strong, I have a notebook called The Funny, in which I write down things I could possibly use to do an open mic night sometime in the future.
A few Pandemic takeaways:
People suck, until they don’t, then they suck again.
People-you can’t live with ’em and you can’t take ’em all out with a Michonne-style katana.
Dogs and people together is one of the greatest gifts of evolution, possibly second only to opposable thumbs.
Sobriety and growing up where and how I did have prepared me for a life of quarantine, as long as someone else can get the supplies. (Thanks, Lumpy!)
Capitalism the way it’s done in the U.S. is one of our biggest problems. Racism, sexism; a lot of the -isms are caused and reinforced my the way we do economics here.
sallyism 