Ho hum, I think it’s fair to say that lockdown has not been particularly good for my mental health. At first I was quite optimistic – I have been practising social distancing since I was a teenager, and I do quite enjoy the school holidays when wife and children are home with me. The reality is that I went from being an introvert who was often home alone to being an introvert who was never at home alone, and whose other avenues of solitary pleasure (such as sitting in town with a hot chocolate and a book) had all been cut off. Not good.
Furthermore, all my non-family human interaction – whether work or social – is now done digitally. It’s been quite interesting to get to grips with a variety of social networking apps…sorry, did I say ‘interesting’? I meant ‘soul-destroying’. I have always found mixing with people to be draining, but doing it over the internet is at least two or three times as exhausting. Now I’m peering at tiny human images on my phone, usually unable to see everyone who’s in the meeting, having to concentrate even harder just to follow threads and read conversations, something that comes naturally to me in real life. It’s like trying to have a chat with someone through their letterbox. I admire the technological marvel of it all, but the truth is that Google Hangouts, Zoom and Microsoft Teams have conspired to create in me a far greater dread of human contact than I ever experienced in my pre-Covid days.
I’ve only had a smartphone for about a year. I resisted it because I’ve never been keen on the idea of always being plugged in. If I must have an umbilical cord, I’d rather it was connected to God than the World Wide Web. Lockdown has forced me to plunge into the world of digital communication; swiping, streaming videos, managing my phone’s tiny memory and pinching to get documents to a size I can read. The thing is, the digital world is unrelenting and so noisy. I have to take my hat off to my children, who have evolved to automatically filter out the online white noise. I can’t do it. I know my limits, and blogging is right about where the line is. It’s somewhat ironic that isolation has led to me feeling overstimulated all the time. I had previously avoided getting too technologically ahead of myself not because I’m a grumpy old man, but because I suspected that it would be bad for my spiritual and mental health. On the plus side, my suspicions were right, and who doesn’t like to be proved right?
I suspect that we weren’t made to live like this. Still, I’m sure I’m not alone, and if any of what I’ve written has struck a chord with you, then neither are you.
