One-Liner Wednesday – A Challenge

When we were advised to isolate ( I was watching a news show, don’t remember which one) and told  how hard it was going to be,  I was sitting next to my dog on my couch,

I looked at him.

Then he looked at me.

And we both laughed-well, I laughed my dog licked my face and started to run in circles. He likes it when I laugh. He’s a weirdo.

Anyway, most of my time is spent alone- I work alone, I write alone, I walk my dog alone, now that I’ve taken my guitar back up I really don’t have a lot of time to socialize and I’m good with that.

Don’t get me wrong, when I’m around family and some of my friends I enjoy it. But to be honest it wears on me because I’m not used to it.

My life might be solitary but it’s not empty.

In fact, I’d love to have some free time to do nothing but I can’t imagine what that ‘nothing’ would look like so I haven’t done a lot to figure that out.

Now my FB newsfeed if full of posts and pictures of people struggling with isolation-cabin fever, having to see the same walls day in and day out.

I was surprised. I honestly thought people would take to this new state of being like a fish to water. People are always looking into their phones, or talking about what they saw on their phones and sharing stuff with each other-from their phones. I don’t see a lot of human interaction going on around me.

So why the stress? Why the pictures of people sitting around in their fleece pajamas looking sad faced or the stories about ‘having to get out’. You could have knocked me over with a feather.

People miss being around other people?

Really?

So what do people actually miss?

Do they miss each other, or do they miss that line, that cord they could grab when they went out further and further away from each other every single time they pulled out their phones and dove into those tiny little screens.

Were people so willing to leave the world around them because they thought they could go back to the old one- the one where you have to take your turn to talk in conversations. The real world where you can’t burn someone to the ground because they don’t agree with your political views or your brand of humor.

After watching my friends struggle with this new- yet temporary existence- I think I have learned that when we let ourselves drift or leave or disengage that the line we think we can rely on to find out way back can one day get yanked right out of our hands -and when it does you might not be in any shape to fashion yourself a new one.

Now I think that when I lose myself in a world of writing or music or books I’m going to put my head up a lot more often and maybe go outside and get lost in  that world  for a spell.

From what I remember, it’s a nice place.