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The Introverts Are Not Okay
If forced proximity has you drained, you’re not alone
On a typical weekday morning a year ago, my husband would wake before dawn to try to get ahead of the morning commute, my son would sneak in a few minutes of Minecraft before hastily getting ready for school, and my daughter would be finishing homework at the breakfast table while lobbying for a ride to avoid the dreaded school bus. My alarm would have been set to an uncomfortably early hour in order to facilitate all of this activity, and I would have slurped my coffee while also feeding the dog and signing a permission slip and texting my neighbor about the soccer carpool.
But then, once the dog was walked and my husband went off to work and the kids were off to school, I would sit down to my second cup of coffee in absolute, blissful silence.
I’m a writer, and I’ve been working at home for years now. This time last year, I had that home/workspace all to myself during my working hours. Even the inevitable household tasks that infiltrated my writing time could be done while also teasing out the threads of an essay idea in my head. Time spent taking a walk or preparing my lunch was also time that I was untangling a plot problem in my novel. I could sit down and read a story in the New Yorker and then leap up to find a notebook to scribble down the thoughts it inspired, without any interruption along the way.
In other words, in those halcyon pre-pandemic days, I had what my husband and I refer to as “brain time.” And now? Some days I struggle to find even a 20-minute stretch of time alone with my thoughts.
When the pandemic upended all of our lives, my life changed the least — from the outside, at least. My husband went from commuting two to three hours a day and spending his days in a shiny office building surrounded by colleagues to working from home and commuting downstairs to the kitchen for lunch. My kids went from full days at middle and high school and a calendar of extracurricular activities and sleepovers to virtual school and severely curtailed social lives. As for me, I had been at home before, and I was at home now. Big deal, right?
The thing is that this whole pandemic quarantine situation has illustrated to me just how much of an introvert I truly…
