The Isolation Hangover & the Lobster

I was texting a friend the other day about a meeting we both attended. The meetings used to be reasonably well run, but this was one was disorganized. He said things like this are happening more often as we recover from our "isolation hangover."

Yes.

In Seattle especially, we have been loathe to get back to normal after the pandemic, I don't know why. I think many people here still believe the pandemic is still happening. Nevertheless, we are coming back together and the results are kind of ugly, at least in my world of remote workers. People who never fully worked remote (grocery store workers, nurses, doctors, etc.) might not have this problem like the rest of us.

Today I went to work in the office -- and there were people there! I thought I'd be overjoyed, excited to have co-workers, but it was odd, it was different. Now I am coming back to work in a place where I never knew the people before the pandemic, so I am getting to know them now. I am not talking about my immediate team, but the teams that are adjacent to mine. My sense was there was a lot of negativity, and then a decent amount of fear. It was like being in a cage with a bunch of grumpy bears that did not want to be in the cage. I just tried to hide and blend in so they wouldn't notice me.

I also joined an Improv class which is fun and hard and interesting and takes a lot of courage to go on stage and act things out by the seat of your pants. It requires thinking and not thinking and feeling and flow.

Afterwards, the class went out for a beer. It was fun, but I think it was one of the first times many of the people there had been out in public with a new group of people since the pandemic. 

I feel like I have been on a boat for the past three years, and I am finally getting back on shore. Everyone else has been on their own boat, and we are coming back to shore together, and we don't know how to act or behave.

Or another analogy -- I feel like a lobster that has shed her shell, waiting for the new one to grow back. In the meantime, I feel a little raw, unprotected in social interactions.