I really want to give you a history of the term “social distance” as folks are really getting spun up in the nuances, but that’s not what this post is about. It’s about new things I’ve learned about myself in the past week of #socialdistancing.
1) I’m naturally a social distancer.
When you accept that social distance is a term and phenomenon from the early 1900s – when even telephones couldn’t keep anyone other than the very rich connected – it makes a bit more sense to think about the physical space part of this notion.
There have been 7 humans in my personal space – my apartment – since I moved in 3.5 months ago:
- the 4 men who moved my stuff in from my moving truck (about 2 hours)
- the 2 friends who drove my car up from Charleston as part of my move (about 30 minutes)
- the 1 wifi installation tech (about 1 hour)
Me and Shadow, we go out for walks to interact with the world, and keep our space private.
Even at the office, my office is pretty tightly organized, with chairs on the other side of the desk. There’s only one person with express permission to invade my side of my desk, and it’s a teaching/demonstration thing when I invite someone to watch over my shoulder to learn how to do something.
I stop and talk to everyone who walks in, but I do expect them to stay on their side of my desk. It’s a physical distance, not a social distance.
2) I’m a big social sharer – follow me on FB or IG (not so much TW)
Turns out sheltering in place hasn’t slowed that down one bit. If anything, it’s amplified it. I’m here for it.
3) I’m *more* likely to sing over a Zoom than in person – karaoke WIN
Confession time: despite being a paid, professional singer – soloist and chorister – for over 2 decades, I’ve been terrified of karaoke since college. I LOVE going to karaoke and supporting my friends and even singing along, but I always say NO to actually going up. Sometimes I’ll pick songs (Wilson Phillips’ “Hold On” has always been a super favorite), and still I never actually do it.
Until Virtual Karaoke last night, hosted by my a colleague from work. All her idea. And her invitation included just listening and cheering others on. That’s what I planned to do. And then she asked me for the cat song. She’d listened to one of my YouTube videos of me doing the Rossini “Cat Duet” and wanted to hear it in person. Okay, comfort zone city – give me opera any day, and I can do it. It was weird to try and do it without someone singing the other part, and I still I could do that without fear.
The realization: it’s the thought of sounding like an opera singer singing popular songs and making them weird to others that is my block.
So while my first song was technically opera, and my second song came from The Sound of Music, after that it was good classics like “Hold On,” Otis Redding’s “Dock of the Bay” followed by the Pitch Perfect Riff Offs and Hamilton’s “You’ll Be Back.”
4) I’m not the introvert I thought I was – and you may not be either.
This one stopped me cold. I’ve spent years labeling myself an introvert, explaining away my need for controlled personal space, my preference for one-on-one over crowds, my careful management of who gets access to my world.
This past week quietly introduced another possibility: what if it was never introversion at all?
Later Addition one day when I was reminiscing on past posts: For me, this moment was the beginning of a journey — one that eventually led me to seek a formal evaluation and, ultimately, an autism diagnosis. The label didn’t change who I am. But it reframed everything about how I’d always moved through the world, and gave me a language for things I’d never quite been able to explain.
Whether you’ve self-imposed a quarantine or your state has mandated it, we are all about to find out where our real thresholds lie. Stripped of routine, performance, and the noise of regular life — what’s left might surprise you.
What have you noticed about yourself this week?
What will you do with that?
Singing about Cooking 