A few years ago, I decided that I would make a real effort to become more social, instead of spending most of my free time sitting at home. I was going to find ways to socialize, byt finding local groups doing stuff I’m interested in, by visiting conventions, maybe try going to concerts or clubs. Maybe even *gasp* try dating. There’s a part of me who often tries to push against these ideas, coming up with excuses to stay at home instead, but I was going to do my damndest to fight against it, argue against it, or simply ignore it, because I had a genuine longing to not just sit at home, alone.
Then the Covid pandemic started.
And now, that antisocial part of me has the perfect excuse, that I’m having a really hard time arguing against.
“Oh sure, you can join a group or go to a convention, but is it really worth the hassle? You wouldn’t want to endanger anyone else, would you? You’ll have to wear a mask constantly (and if you start to go out regularly, that’s a whole lot of masks you gotta buy!), always make sure to wash your hands if you happen to touch it, always try to keep your distance, never letting your guard down for an instant. Oh, and try to make sure that all meetings you attend are outdoors too, because being indoors with other people increases the risk!”
“And even then, even if you do everything you can perfectly, if you take every possible precaution, you’ll still have the nagging knowledge that it’s not 100% safe, that you might be endangering everyone around you despite your best efforts (especially since most people around you doesn’t seem to care about masking anyway, and your social anxiety makes it so you don’t want to bring the mood down by arguing about it). Wouldn’t it be easier to just stay home and play videogames all day, and then go to bed and fall asleep while worrying about dying alone?”
I am having some difficulty with that question as well. Every in-person social event poses a risk with COVID– even if masked, and most people are not careful about masking. And whether your concern is more about getting sick or making others sick, there’s risk either way (no surefire way to be certain you aren’t contagiously sick, or that someone else isn’t– even if asymptomatic).
It’s often a balancing act of “how risky do I think this specific activity would be? how much do I – and the other people involved– care about that risk in comparison to the benefit?” ….there’s no simple answer.
I can’t tell you where your boundaries ought to be on this. But while I try to navigate these choices myself… I have found that there is one pretty reliably safe thing that can help take the edge off loneliness in the meantime.
Which is to have an online community. Not public like Tumblr, but private like a Discord server. (Or like that email-list concept in that one popular post of mine, I guess). It’s not the same as in-person socializing– but with people free to chat in small, personal groups, it can fill …something close to the same void.
(And this is as much as anything a reminder to myself. My own “argue myself out of socializing” side has gotten me out of the last few days I could have joined the group movie-watching session on my Discord server, and I’m starting to feel the absence of that. It really does make a difference.)