Six-hundred-thirty-sixth Post
On Tuesday, I returned from 2 weeks in Japan with some of my friends: Jeremy, Caroline, Katy, DJ, Becky, and Nahal.
It was my second time in that country, and I enjoyed myself quite a bit. I'm not sure if I enjoyed it as much as I did the first time, when everything was so new and I was learning so much, but this time it had a more comfortable familiarity to it; the broad strokes were much less alien, which meant I had more attention to pay to the details.
But now I'm back in America and...
Despite having a number of close friends, I live a somewhat hermitic lifestyle, often keeping to myself and choosing to emotionally disengage from many situations rather than try and deepen my bonds with others. You know: never resort to a deep truth when a joke will do. That sort of thing.
Now that I'm back (and compounded by my jetlagged schedule leaving me mostly awake at night and asleep during the day), I'm feeling a deep sense of isolation. Not that it's surprising: I just spent 13 days living in the back pockets of six other people, all crammed into a house that was maybe supposed to hold half our number. During most of the days, we would hang out as a big group or several smaller groups, each day filled with a sense of purpose as we strove together towards immediate, concrete goals (visit here, see this, do that).
Cue two plane flights, and now I'm wandering around the house at night, listless and alone, like a ghost detached from everything and everyone.
After all, while I have many close friends, I'm not especially close to any one of them: no significant others, no one I share a unique attraction with, or anything like that. And I've never really gone out of my way to communicate with any of them through other means-I don't text or chat with people socially; only to retrieve or relay specific information-so it's just me and myself, for hours on end, without even work, since I'm off until Monday.
That being said, I can't really decry it as a bad situation, because it's one of my own making and it works for me for the most part. It's just a temporary adjustment period from the hypersocialization of the trip back down to my normal levels. In a week or two, my shell will be back up to spec and I won't even remember why I felt like this.
It was my second time in that country, and I enjoyed myself quite a bit. I'm not sure if I enjoyed it as much as I did the first time, when everything was so new and I was learning so much, but this time it had a more comfortable familiarity to it; the broad strokes were much less alien, which meant I had more attention to pay to the details.
But now I'm back in America and...
Despite having a number of close friends, I live a somewhat hermitic lifestyle, often keeping to myself and choosing to emotionally disengage from many situations rather than try and deepen my bonds with others. You know: never resort to a deep truth when a joke will do. That sort of thing.
Now that I'm back (and compounded by my jetlagged schedule leaving me mostly awake at night and asleep during the day), I'm feeling a deep sense of isolation. Not that it's surprising: I just spent 13 days living in the back pockets of six other people, all crammed into a house that was maybe supposed to hold half our number. During most of the days, we would hang out as a big group or several smaller groups, each day filled with a sense of purpose as we strove together towards immediate, concrete goals (visit here, see this, do that).
Cue two plane flights, and now I'm wandering around the house at night, listless and alone, like a ghost detached from everything and everyone.
After all, while I have many close friends, I'm not especially close to any one of them: no significant others, no one I share a unique attraction with, or anything like that. And I've never really gone out of my way to communicate with any of them through other means-I don't text or chat with people socially; only to retrieve or relay specific information-so it's just me and myself, for hours on end, without even work, since I'm off until Monday.
That being said, I can't really decry it as a bad situation, because it's one of my own making and it works for me for the most part. It's just a temporary adjustment period from the hypersocialization of the trip back down to my normal levels. In a week or two, my shell will be back up to spec and I won't even remember why I felt like this.