I have debated with myself about releasing this. Then I started thinking about my previous posting. After all, there is no indication anyone but me will ever see it. What am I afraid of? Maybe someone won't like what I am saying. So what? There is a lot of things other people say that I don't like and that hasn't impeded them. So, here it goes.
It seems that things are different these days compared to many decades ago. People don't often have a lot of friends. They might have one or two and getting together to do things is not very common. Then 2020 happened and the whole bottom fell out of being personally in touch with ... anyone. It's been Zoom this, Skype that, Team something else plus working from home so that you don't even have in-person contact with co-workers. I am retired since 2018 so I didn't even have that the last few years. Everyone is just a picture and voice coming out of a computer or phone.
My wife does much better at keeping in touch with remote friends. She calls them just to say hello and they call her just to talk about what's going on. I do good to send a Christmas card once a year. I am awful about maintaining contact with people over long distances. It's kind of strange since I am the one whose hobby has been talking to people hundreds and thousands of miles away that I have never met personally.
What I find with the remote interactions these days is such an artificial environment where I don't feel like I know anyone and I don't feel comfortable with letting anyone actually know me. The exceptions to this are rare for me. It doesn't help that the one time in my life that I felt like I had personal friends it all turned out to not be real. It was all artificial, manipulation and fake. I wasn't being fake but it seems that everyone else was. As a result I developed a deep seated distrust of people because the people I trusted I found out were not trustworthy.
In so many "remote" interactions with people I end up sitting there and saying absolutely nothing. I listen, watch, and then after a while I just disappear fully convinced that no one ever even notices or cares for that matter. I know this sounds depressing and it is. I wish life was different and I think it was different at times in the past. I am just not optimistic about where we are headed in the future.
I relate to all the people who, for whatever reason, don't feel like they have ever been able to express who they really are inside. Me too. No, I don't have any deep dark secrets, but I think we all hide the parts of us that we don't feel are acceptable to those we are around. It wears on you. You get so caught up in not being you until you finally discover you don't even know who you are anymore.
Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day and I will start over and try to be my best self once again.
