Loneliness and busy-ness

As soon as I set foot on the plane, it seems, loneliness came crashing down on me. I missed everyone with a desperate ache, and I couldn’t even cuddle my dog to make the feeling go away because he was sequestered away under the seat in front of me. The feeling continued through the rest of the day, through both plane flights and into my evening at home. On the flights to distract myself I buried my head in a book — The Signature of All Things — which I had just started specifically because I knew fiction can be far more engrossing than the non-fiction that I generally occupy myself with. I also was interested in reading it for a potential book to recommend to my book club, but unfortunately there’s some pretty risqué material in there! I hadn’t been expecting that. Once I got home I busied myself with unpacking, but that did little to soothe the feeling of being so very alone. I miss my family. Today was better, if only because I was so busy.

My life is pretty crowded of late. I think to some degree this was highlighted by my time in Louisiana, when I wasn’t doing so much. Even there though I was still kept up later than everyone else every night with various activities — reading, writing, studying German. I’m still regularly surprised by how little time there seems to be. I know I made the right decision by opting out of NaNoWriMo this year, much as I always enjoy it. I just don’t have the spare cycles to spend working on a novel these days. Part of the point of course is that there’s never enough time, so just commit to it and do it anyway, but really I don’t see how I could have possibly done it this year and not gone crazy. Even so, there’s still that twinge of sadness that I’m missing out.

Wrapping up today, I don’t feel feel so crushingly alone as I did yesterday; I’m getting back into the swing of my life here, reconnecting with everything. I’m building a pretty good life out here, so grateful as I am that I got to spend a couple weeks with family, it’s good to be home.

A joint birthday cake for my aunt and uncle