I’m sitting in my home office after what was going to be my first in-person work trip became yet another virtual gathering. There is a tangle of feelings I can’t quite sort out—disappointment, relief, uncertainty, rest.
Disappointment because even as an introvert I can feel the fraying of so much time in the same room and the same routine. Even the bike rides, those lifesaving flights into the world, become well-trod paths. There is the vacuous space I have to offer when my spouse comes home from work and asks about my day. What has my day been? I wonder.
“I caught a rat,” I say. A hole had appeared under our doorstep, and then there was a week of setting traps and waiting. It was the most interesting thing that had happened in a month. For days there was just walking the dog, sending emails, cleaning the house, talking to some faces on a screen. So I was disappointed that I wouldn’t be somewhere else meeting people, learning something new about someone, being surprised by an unexpected conversation in the hall. I was disappointed that I wouldn’t have a few days away from the familial duties that fill each day. The monotony would remain a little longer.
