This isn’t my usual sort of jam, but I heard it yesterday and it’s been in my head since, so I figure I might as well put it in yours. There are lyrics in the video description.
Now that we have gotten to 2021 and it’s basically been more of the same, I hope that all of you are still doing ok. Carin and I are still doing as fine as you can do with things the way they are. Like I say to everyone who asks, life is busy, but not terribly exciting. All the days are pretty full between working and taking care of the house and taking care of ourselves and trying to stay caught up with people and finding time to just have fun doing nothing and whatever else might come along.
Somehow, it’s already March. That’s weird. Of course, everybody’s starting to look back on how things were last year and what they would soon become since we’re pretty much at the time when everything went boom around here. I’ve been doing a bit of that (Carin being a human calendar/way back machine makes it hard to avoid), but I think I’ve actually done more looking forward. Not to any specific thing, but just to what it’s going to be like returning to old life whenever that starts feeling like a good idea. And whenever I do, I keep landing on the same thought.
It’s going to be nice to have the freedom to go to concerts and sports again. Heading back to some of my favourite restaurants is going to be good. Seeing friends and family at will? Cool. Not feeling the need to turn everything into a risk assessment? Excellent. But as great as all of these things will surely be, there’s an element of disappointment that inevitably creeps in whenever I think about them. To understand why, you need to know something about me that not even many of the people who know me best understand. I’m an extremely extroverted introvert.
I like people. Talking to them is easy. I can usually make friends wherever I go. I have fun out and about. But if it were up to me, most of the time I wouldn’t have to worry about it. I don’t particularly care for traveling even short distances either, which is fun because Carin and I have plenty of people in our lives who aren’t exactly in close proximity to us. This makes for a lot of weekend trips. I have a love hate relationship with those. I absolutely hate getting there, and I’m not a huge fan of being stuck somewhere, unable to escape for days at a time. Ditto for those times when those people come the other way. I’m on my turf and that’s nice, but my turf stops feeling like my turf pretty quickly and it all gets old really fast. We always have great gobs of fun and make long-lasting memories, but it’s a lot harder on me than it looks.
So basically, this year with it’s built-in excuses to not do all of the usual shit has been pretty nice in its own way and I’m going to be a little sad when it’s gone. Having the freedom to be somewhere will be wonderful, but honestly, not having to always be somewhere or think about having to be somewhere has been good for my soul.
So yeah…that’s kind of where I’m at. It’s all very confusing at times. But if that’s the hardest thing I have to deal with right now, things are all right.