Boooooring

Yesterday we held Back to the Lounge, my annual university gamer reunion.  Sadly it was virtual instead of in person, but it was still good to get to see some people I hadn't seen in awhile and take some sweet, sweet dollars from others due to their incompetence at barbu.

It sure made me feel boring though.

When someone says "So, what's new?" I used to be able to talk about things I was doing, or at least something in the news I found interesting.  Now I have nothing.

There are two reasons for this - first, everyone is boring now because nobody goes anywhere, meets anyone, or does anything.  If you aren't boring now, odds are good you are a jackass who is taking big risks for no reason.

The second reason is my hiatus from social media.  In the fall I ditched my facebook feed and I don't look at it anymore.  That has been good in a way, because a lot of that feed was full of stress inducing outrage that was useless to me.  It was largely stuff I couldn't do anything about, and focusing and worrying about things you can't change is not useful.  However, I also don't have much to say about anything.  If people want to talk about the impact on world trade of a boat getting stuck in the Suez Canal, I don't have anything to contribute.  I didn't know that was happening until days after.

Having been away from social media for many months now I think that leaving it behind was a good decision.  It isn't without cost, because there were definitely things worth reading on there.  Some of those worthwhile things were just amusing, and some were informative and useful.  An awful lot were just time wasting nonsense though, and in sum I think being away from it is a positive change.

However, I am not sure that combining this with a pandemic is a good idea.  It has left me feeling isolated.  I am not sure that solving feelings of isolation by binging on Facebook is actually a good plan, but definitely my timing could have been better.  

I can't be sure what the optimal, rational course is.  It will be many months yet before we are all vaccinated and life can truly go back to normal.  Until then my ability to generate interesting ideas and stories will be limited.  I can fill the gap with stuff from the news or social media in order to have things to say, but I don't know how much value saying those things has.  Humans use small talk as a crucial part of social interaction, so being stuck for things to say isn't great.  Should I see "Did you see the latest outrageous or unlikely thing on the internet?" as a important piece of having relationships with people, or just a pointless waste of time, filling the air?

Viscerally I don't have the urge to go back on Facebook.  No matter how much I poke at it from various angles, I simply don't have the emotional drive to get back on that wagon.  Even if it does leave me boring as anything, I think my course is charted, and I just have to wait until we finally get covid-19 on the ropes to become a person with interesting things to say again.