Wide awake again at 3am, I made tea and went upstairs to write. There’s no point in lying in bed with my mind running relays between memories and new ideas. So I’m here at my desk with all the tabs in front of me for my current copywriting assignment, and I’m wondering what’s at the root of my restlessness.
I think it’s a lack of connection.
But let me back up a bit.What am I doing, and how did I get here?
Susan and I will celebrate our fifth wedding anniversary in a few weeks. Since we combined households, our four teenagers have grown up and launched themselves into the world, and we woke up one morning in a Valrico, Florida, suburb to an empty nest and an unfriendly neighborhood where people avoided one another.
We’d been talking about moving for a couple years, if only we both had fully remote jobs. I’d been writing and editing from home for quite awhile, but Susan had been anchored to her job with a major Tampa Bay newspaper since shortly after we were married, but that changed suddenly, and we decided to make a getaway. I had misgivings about moving away from my then 18-year-old son living with his mother about five miles away, but he repeatedly urged us to do what we wanted, saying he’d enjoy the change of climate and scenery when he came to visit.
It was time to pull up stakes. But the out-of-control housing market meant we’d have to spend everything we had to stay in Florida—my home state, not Susan’s. And I was pretty disillusioned having seen how Florida had changed while I was away soldiering for twenty years. I moved back looking forward to the orange groves and strawberry fields of my childhood in Eastern Hillsborough County. What I found was overpopulation, rampant pollution, and a state government leaning hard toward fascism.
We moved to the foothills of Western North Carolina about six months ago. And although every southern state seems to have its own version of the same problems, we love it here and like to think we can make a difference for good, if only on our own street.
But something is still missing—that feeling of connection. Our new neighbors are wonderful, friendly people who we already love, but most are our parents’ age and aren’t likely to join us for a hike in the mountains or drinks around the fire pit. We’re feeling a bit isolated.
We lost things to the pandemic that aren't coming back any time soon. Susan and I don’t commute to an office anymore. Some of the people I love are never going to be vaccinated, so for their safety, we’re not visiting. We keep in touch with friends, but the circle of people we see regularly is tiny, and that’s a big change from how we used to live. The sooner we accept these changes, the sooner we’ll learn how to live with them. But I, for one, still feel a tiny, nagging anxiety that keeps asking, When are we going to our lives back? The answer is that this is the life we have.
I’m an introvert to begin with, with a long history of holding up walls during parties. I’ve never felt concerned about meeting people, but now that I’m out in public only about once per week, I don’t meet people.
We have to be patient. We have to take care of each other. We’re going to have to wait and see how the pandemic plays out, how it continues to affect our society, and what new ways we can find to meet like-minded people, do fun things, and build relationships.
There are signs that, with the Omicron variant proving to be less deadly, COVID-19 will burn itself out. That seems like wishful thinking, but past pandemics have ended in a similar way, including the so-called Spanish Flu that killed at least 50 million people, including 675,000 in the United States. I choose optimism, and I wear a KN-95 in public.
Meanwhile, writing helps. Writing is connection. There are several of you out there reading these words, and I know some of you personally. I like to imagine your faces as my thoughts enter your consciousness. I’m here to make connections and to be understood.
I’ve heard it often and said it myself—the pandemic ruins everything. But we’re going to have to do better than rage and complain. We have to find new ways to connect with each other, and I’m not talking about Zoom calls.
I’m old enough to remember writing lots of paper-and-ink letters, licking stamps, and getting answers in the mail. I realize how old-fashioned that might sound, but I’ve always loved writing letters. I still look for any opportunity to send tangible ink-on-paper to someone. I recognize a handful of people by their handwriting, and it’s a joy to hold something in my hands that they created with theirs. It’s an intimate form of connection I’d like to see make a comeback.
Before the pandemic, my dear friend Vicki invited me to participate in a collaborative story project. One of us started a story, and each person in the group added to it, all through the post. Every couple weeks, I’d get a this envelope in the mail containing each person’s contribution, each piece in an individual writer’s handwriting. It felt warm and personal. We were connecting in what felt like an intimate way while living in different cities. The couple times we met in person at a coffee shop or restaurant, I felt that we’d made a rare and precious connection, even between those of us who had never spent time together in person. It was short-lived, but so memorable. The story we created together wasn’t terrific, but the connection was.
Until it’s safer and easier to meet in person, we have our ideas and our words to share. We’re social creatures by nature, and we need more than that. But for now, words can serve as our survival rations. Keep in touch, friends.