Remembering Loneliness
Recently, my relationship has transitioned from no-distance to long-distance, giving me more time to myself. When we lived together, the choice of how I spent free time was the result of a collective decision making process that almost took care of itself. Getting home from work, catching up, mealtimes, hanging out, tidbits and tangents. Before you knew it, the time would be 11pm and we never even made a plan.
I work 9-5, play football one evening a week and tend to have semi-regular pre-arranged social plans like birthdays and visitors. I don't have kids, by the way, so my in-between freetime is voluminous. Since my partner has moved away, I've consciously been trying to curate it, to prevent drooping into sloppy habits like doom scrolling and ready meals. Hence deleting social media apps and also finding a new job. Hence telling the ether all about it by pressing publish.
As I start this new blog, which has come from a desire to spend this influx of freetime on a creative pursuit that energises me, I am reminded that my online introspections were in the past often my closest companion. At times of loneliness, writing kept me sane, although unfortunate readers could have reasonably doubted how effective it really was at achieving that goal. Now, my friendships are more mature, I'm more comfortable with who I am, and I don't rely emotionally on relationships that outsiders labelled complicated.
But let's put it to the test, starting with my next post, by seeing how I straddle the line between downright boring and utterly unhinged.