It’s taken a bit of time, but I’ve gradually begun accepting the fact that A) I’m unemployed; B) This is somehow okay; C) It’s permanent. I’m not “on vacation.” The phone is not going to start ringing. There are no emails to answer, no urgent fires to put out. No one is depending on me to keep the machinery running.
It’s glorious, don’t get me wrong. But it still feels vaguely illicit, like skipping class. I can still hear my sophomore English teacher from high school when I was loitering in the halls: “Mr. Dumbblog, isn’t there someplace you should be right now…?”
Well… no, actually. There isn’t anywhere I should be at the moment, and I'm not sure what that says. It feels wrong.
It’s why I decided to get past my issues with AA and start going to in-person meetings again (and, in a move not like me at all, signed up for their potluck picnic next Saturday.) It’s why I started Tai Chi. It’s why I suddenly signed up for piano lessons.
Look, I’m a life-long workin stiff, I’ve always had a place to go, a thing to do, people to annoy. My jobs have always filled that need, which I suppose is why it feels odd to now invent reasons to go out, to (for example) make a social destination of “lunch.” Lunch with others was always an extension of a staff meeting that went long. It feels oddly deliberate, even pushy, inviting someone to lunch for… what? Social reasons?
It seems so… needy.
* * *
It’s fair to say that Covid taught me many things — how murderously fucking idiotic our political discourse has become, for one thing — but it also taught me something else: That I need people.
Until Covid, I had never needed people. I saw more than enough people in the course of a normal day, and when the announcement came that everyone was being sent home indefinitely, there was none happier than me.
The prospect of not having to press the flesh, so to speak, came as a huge relief to me. No longer would I have to endure listening to a boring recap of your weekend. Nevermore would I need to smell your lunch cooking in the communal microwave. I was free from all of that, free of the commuting and traffic, free of the hustle and bustle.
Free of you.
But a funny thing happened on the way to quarantine; after about the third or fourth month, as people started to realize this shit wasn’t funny anymore, right about when both of my parents died from it, and as my relationship began to crumble and the job was going down the crapper and the walls of my former life began to cave in around me -- it was right about then I realized something:
I need people. God damn me, but for reasons I can’t entirely explain, I need you people. Maybe not all of you, there isn't room. But you, you and you? We should stay in touch.
* * *
This afternoon I’m having lunch with a relatively new friend. I can think of no more compelling reason to meet her for lunch than the joy of having lunch on a lovely afternoon, and because she thought to ask me.
And also because, goddammit I can. My days are free at the moment. Who knows? Maybe we'll cut class and go to a matinee.
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