things that i miss about leaving the house

Sorry there haven’t been any songs for a bit. I feel like this past week — what I think, but honestly am not sure of, was week three of Everybody Just Stay Home Club — was where I really hit a wall in terms of just … existing? Everything just seemed immensely harder last week than it had any of the other previous weeks, and by the time Saturday came around, it was basically like an adrenaline crash, and all I really wanted to do was sit and knit and snuggle my cats. (Mission: accomplished.)

I can’t quite put a finger on why this week was tougher than the rest. I so far am enjoying the freedom that working from home brings. No bra, work in my pajamas, get to take breaks with my cats, and so far almost all of the video meetings I’ve had to do have been casual chats with my team at the office, so I haven’t felt much need to actually make myself look work appropriate.

I’m not a person that goes out a ton, so aside from the regular hockey games that have been wiped off my schedule, and a weekly D&D meetup that has now gone online, there wasn’t much on my social calendar that got deleted. I don’t miss “socialize at the bar” time or “girls’ night out” or anything like that, because I didn’t do those things.

(And yes, all of this comes with the acknowledgement that I am very privileged through all of this. I don’t have to go to work outside of my home. If I don’t want to go to the store, I have the means to pay for delivery or pickup, or can order out from a restaurant. Anything I need for my cats can be ordered online if I don’t want to leave the house. These are all very privileged-white-lady-with-a-well-paying-job complaints. I get it. Every time I feel even a little whiny about this, I try to drop some money in one of the many mutual aid funds/people’s Venmos/charities/a purchase from a local business that I love, because so many people are being so very harmed by this, while I whine about not being able to choose to not go to a movie or something.)

Anyway, after thinking about it, here is, in no particular order, a brief list of things I miss in our current state of pandemic-ness:

1. Touching things. When I go to the store, I’m consciously aware of things that I touch and start to have feelings that say “if you touch that, you should just buy it.” I bought yarn last week from my local yarn store via Skype, where they went on video and showed me the selection of the yarn I was looking for, and I told them which color I wanted. And while for this particular project, I had to buy a specific brand of yarn, I missed walking through the store and squishing all sorts of things.

2. Hockey games. I mean, this should go without saying, but I miss watching on TV. I miss going to games. Every time I get an alert on my calendar for a game I had tickets to, I get a little sad. I miss sitting up in the press box with my fellow media friends at Chicago Wolves games, cracking jokes and keeping each other updated on what was going on in the rest of the world while the game played on.

3. Not having video calls. Or having so many meetings over the phone that could have been solved faster over email. I am trying to be nice and gracious and patient about this, because I know so many people are wired differently than me. So many people are missing that level of human contact — a voice on the other end of the phone, a smiling face, whatever. I miss squishing yarn; most other people miss, like, actually seeing other humans. So I am trying to handle this with grace but oh my god I have so many more meetings, so much more screen time, than I ever did in my pre-Covid-19 life.

4. Having the option to not go out. Like I said, I am not much of a social butterfly, and while I like going to movies/concerts/whatever, the truth is that unless I’m particularly motivated or it’s something I’m desperate to see, most of the times I’ll just stay home. But I like being able to choose to do that — to stay in or go out. My lack of motivation to go out and do things is something to be unpacked at a future time, like when it’s relevant again, but I find myself missing having the choice of it all.

5. Travel. I already had one trip — a flight to Nashville at the end of this month, then a drive to middle-of-nowhere Tennessee to go to an Andrew Bird concert held in a cavern, then a drive over to Birmingham, Alabama to see the Mountain Goats — cancelled. A planned trip to Denver/Fort Collins next month, followed by a weekend drive around the midwest (Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit) for more Mountain Goats shows is certainly off, too. It’s not the responsible thing to do, so I won’t do it, but there’s an itch in the back of my head that says “book a hotel room somewhere within driving distance”.

6. I don’t even know what to file this under, but, like — my D&D group meets online now, and, pre-Covid-19, when we met in person, our usual weekly host is so lovely about making sure we are all fed and watered before a session starts. And the other week, over video chat, she was like, “does anyone need a La Croix? I think I also have some beer, and maybe a cider,” just like she always does, and damn if that didn’t make me a little sad? It’s just the small little rituals of every day life, I guess, that I miss? A lot of my Thursday nights involved me working a little later than usual, then going to waste some time at a coffee shop, eating some pastries and drinking a smoothie, before going to D&D, and it’s that little routine — the one thing I reliably did most every week outside of work — that sometimes I find myself missing the most.

It all boils down to choice, doesn’t it? I liked being able to decide if I wanted to go to a restaurant, go to a movie, take a spur-of-the-moment trip. I like wandering aimlessly through the yarn store, the book store, freaking Target, taking my time making decisions, picking things up, putting them back down. Heck, I liked being able to evaluate if I really wanted to go to that party/DJ night/dance party/birthday gathering, and to stay home if I didn’t feel up for being around people. (I usually do not feel up to being around people. I stay home a lot. I don’t expect that to change.)

What important-to-you, but generally inconsequential, things are you missing right now? I’m not talking about truly important things like “I wish I could see Family Member” or anything like that. I’m talking “I miss squishing yarn in the store” level stuff.

Like I said, when I get too whiny about this stuff — and a post talking about how I miss not going to the movies out of choice rather than necessity sure falls under that category — I try to throw money at it, so I just made some donations to the Greater Chicago Food Depository and Howard Brown Health.