small thoughts part 8
In ‘small thoughts’ posts, I’m posting a collection of short thoughts and opinions that don’t warrant their own post. :) It's been a while!
I’m looking back and am so grateful for everything I got myself through. The times I was alone, sick, in pain but still went to appointments, walked the dog, got groceries and picked up meds. The way I still always kept my home clean or resolved a pile of dishes after a few days. The way I would plan self care for myself; baths, making myself good meals, booking massages, scheduling walks in the forests, making playlists for these walks. Making time to stretch, to meditate, to do a little ritual for myself, or the evenings I spent hours helping strangers online while sipping on my tea, feeling cozy, safe, content, in my own world. I remember all the times I set out to watch something either on my TV or PC and prepared a thermos so I’d have lots of tea and not have to get up, and arranged cookies and nuts and some bread or fruits on a board for me. All the creams on my face and body, my hair. I’m so glad I did that. Now my wife does a lot of these for me.
I think one day we will look back on this and realized we lived the dream. Just buying whatever we want at the grocery store, buying a lot for our shared niche hobbies, my wife being home all the time due to being unemployed, me being home most of the week, home office after all work’s done spent taking baths and gaming and grocery shopping and painting and watching things together, cleaning together, getting nails done…
I used to think peoplewatching is for judging them, because that’s what my mum always did. But you can just watch them neutrally, or even compliment them in your head.
People get less scary to me after spending time peoplewatching. It’s like in everyday life, they’re like cars I dodge on my way to something, and bad experiences stick out for longer. But when I am just a body observing somewhere in a corner, everyone is so human to me. So many people look interesting to talk to. I see little details on them that tell a story. Maybe I should make it a habit to sit in this café weekly, observing, sitting there with my notebook, and trying to talk to people who look inviting and like they wouldn’t mind. It would be a good practice for my hesitancy to talk to others, too.
Too bad I usually have a job to do around this time. I guess I could try working from here, but it’s less nice.
I always recover from a sort of work-induced misanthropy during time off, and when I have to work with people again or commute, it all comes back. Do I idealize people once they’re strangers from a distance, and just notice how rotten people are once I get close and am affected by their actions? I hate how my job burns me out on people and it’s not even customer-facing; it’s other employees causing me to feel that way. I wonder what the truth is; if my job is a bad influence on my view on people, or if it’s easy to love them from afar. Maybe both. The truth might be in the middle.
I could work a job that makes me love people more, and I can acknowledge that it’s easy to think a stranger seems nice when you don’t actually know them.
I regret leaving my notebook at home. I’d prefer to write this in there and not type it in my phone.
Thinking about how it has never been easier to socialize, technically. Yes, third spaces disappear, yes less being outside; but all the messaging, video calling, social media, feeds, aggregators etc. lets you meet hundreds of people so quickly. Your selection to choose from is so much bigger than just locally. There’s more opportunities for travel for the average person compared to just 100 years ago, too. Lots like that, and still we complain about disconnection.
I see it and I think, maybe it’s not necessarily that we live in disconnected times in general; it’s that you replaced connection with consumption of podcasts, and you frequently leave or never even join messaging servers and group chats, and you delete you accounts and purge your friend lists every couple months. You put off responding to messages and emails, and you lurk in most spaces you have accounts in, and you lock your profile and hide yourself from feeds.
So? How are you supposed to capitalize on the social aspect of it all? It would be impossible to create a tool to help you. Change has to come from you. You have to open yourself up to receive love.
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