I’m an Introvert, and Quarantine is Driving Me Crazy.

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a family Zoom meeting to see how things are going for everyone, and once in a while I bake and bring some treats to the grandparents and put them up on the porch, then talk to them from down the steps for a bit before going back into quarantine… But that doesn’t quite hit the spot. There are no high-fives from the kids, no hugs for the grandparents, no little nudges when we see the kids do something awfully funny. We keep our hands to ourselves and ourselves to our homes.Keeping a schedule helps. Of course it does. But at some point, the structure helps separate the days too clearly. I don’t want seven individual days before I talk to family again. I don’t want 15 minutes of webcam interaction with work each day to be the extent of my talking with adults outside my home. So then begins the skipping of the schedule. The staying up late and sleeping in and doing things whenever so that the days seem to connect like little wooden train cars with links tying one to the next. Then the days go faster. Monday becomes Wednesday becomes Saturday becomes Monday again. Losing track of the days seems to speed the days up.But speeding the days up doesn’t make them more eventful. Video chatting people more doesn’t get that connection you need on a daily basis to help maintain your emotional well-being. What is it they say? Three hugs to maintain mental health, more to improve it? After all this is over, it is going to take a while to improve mental health. We will all be in a deep deficit.So we look to other things to

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improve our mental health. Crafts, projects, games, fun things that usually make us happy that we may not always have time for. During “normal” times, they could be a mood booster- a break from the stresses and frustrations of home or work. But now… Now they are a distraction from the lack of things to occupy us, rather than a break from them. They become little obsessions… Things we hyper-focus on until they are complete or we are burnt out on them, and then we move on to the next.There is no easy solution. We can communicate more in other ways, but physical interaction can not be replaced. Maybe from this we will learn a bit about moving backward in time a bit. Spending time with people instead of an occasional text saying “hey.” Calling people instead of texting. Visiting people instead of calling. Spending time with people instead of telling them that you miss them. Showing people you care instead of saying it. Randomly making cupcakes and leaving them on your grandparents’ porch just to show you care.Maybe we can learn how much we truly need each other and show people how much we value them. We can keep doing what we are doing now later on when we get back a degree of normalcy. We can keep doing little neighborhood walks with other families in the area. We can get to know our neighbors and wave when they drive by.We can learn from this. We can be friendly to people we don’t know because they are people and they need kindness as much as we do, even if it’s just a wave and a smile.</article></body>

What I learned from being more introverted than ever before

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At first it doesn’t seem like a big deal. I hardly go out anyways, so what does it matter? I go to work, I do my shopping, I go home, I spend time with my partner and my dog… So a little quarantine isn’t going to affect me.

Boy was I wrong.

It’s the little things in day to day life that make things seem normal- the annoyance of the alarm clock going off, the reminder of work in the morning ensuring you go to bed at a decent time, the people at work that you both like and dislike giving you little mood bumps and drops that keep your day interesting. It’s walking down the hall and jumping a little when someone accidentally bumps into you and apologizes. It’s someone calling your name from down the way and making you turn around. It’s not about the work- People can often do that at home- It’s about the interaction. It’s about the acknowledgement and the little things that make each day special and different.

With quarantine, time is a blur. Sure, a few days a week we have a work Google Meetup to check in, and once a week we have a family Zoom meeting to see how things are going for everyone, and once in a while I bake and bring some treats to the grandparents and put them up on the porch, then talk to them from down the steps for a bit before going back into quarantine… But that doesn’t quite hit the spot. There are no high-fives from the kids, no hugs for the grandparents, no little nudges when we see the kids do something awfully funny. We keep our hands to ourselves and ourselves to our homes.

Keeping a schedule helps. Of course it does. But at some point, the structure helps separate the days too clearly. I don’t want seven individual days before I talk to family again. I don’t want 15 minutes of webcam interaction with work each day to be the extent of my talking with adults outside my home. So then begins the skipping of the schedule. The staying up late and sleeping in and doing things whenever so that the days seem to connect like little wooden train cars with links tying one to the next. Then the days go faster. Monday becomes Wednesday becomes Saturday becomes Monday again. Losing track of the days seems to speed the days up.

But speeding the days up doesn’t make them more eventful. Video chatting people more doesn’t get that connection you need on a daily basis to help maintain your emotional well-being. What is it they say? Three hugs to maintain mental health, more to improve it? After all this is over, it is going to take a while to improve mental health. We will all be in a deep deficit.

So we look to other things to improve our mental health. Crafts, projects, games, fun things that usually make us happy that we may not always have time for. During “normal” times, they could be a mood booster- a break from the stresses and frustrations of home or work. But now… Now they are a distraction from the lack of things to occupy us, rather than a break from them. They become little obsessions… Things we hyper-focus on until they are complete or we are burnt out on them, and then we move on to the next.

There is no easy solution. We can communicate more in other ways, but physical interaction can not be replaced. Maybe from this we will learn a bit about moving backward in time a bit. Spending time with people instead of an occasional text saying “hey.” Calling people instead of texting. Visiting people instead of calling. Spending time with people instead of telling them that you miss them. Showing people you care instead of saying it. Randomly making cupcakes and leaving them on your grandparents’ porch just to show you care.

Maybe we can learn how much we truly need each other and show people how much we value them. We can keep doing what we are doing now later on when we get back a degree of normalcy. We can keep doing little neighborhood walks with other families in the area. We can get to know our neighbors and wave when they drive by.

We can learn from this. We can be friendly to people we don’t know because they are people and they need kindness as much as we do, even if it’s just a wave and a smile.