["Open Mike" is the often off-topic Editorial page of TOP, wherein Yr. Hmbl. Ed. goes a-ramblin' on topics diverse and sundry.]
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Holed up
As of yesterday evening, more Americans have died of COVID-19 since February 1 of this year than died in Viet Nam. Casualties in Viet Nam spanned approximately 19 years, whereas COVID-19 has inflicted the same number of casualties so far in three short months.
Remember, anything that you can do to help slow the spread of the contagion helps everyone, so hang in there if you're able to. I've been holed up here for months, not socializing and only going out for necessary errands. But then, I'm very lucky: I work for myself, I already worked online, I have savings, and I have a pleasant place to shelter, with plenty of room. And I'm an introvert anyway. I'm acutely aware that many people are not so fortunate and that "sheltering in place" is a hardship for them. These include: people who were living hand-to-mouth, dependent on their next paycheck for cash to live on; people who have lost their jobs or seen dramatic slowdowns in their work; extroverts, who find being alone for extended periods of time draining and discouraging; people in jails, old-age homes, and homeless shelters; people with too many people confined to too small a house; people with various physical, mental, or emotional deficits who have lost part or all of their support structure; people who are stuck away from where they want to be and find it difficult to travel; and people whose necessary jobs place them in harm's way. There are other difficulties. I have a friend whose mission in life, you might say, has been almost entirely stripped away. He seems to be adequately sustained in terms of his physical needs, but losing his sense of purpose, his sense of usefulness, is proving challenging for him.
The thing I regret about my own situation is selfish and trivial: I wish I had my own pool table here. Because, man, I'd be practicing four hours a day during this b*tch. It would have been the perfect thing to keep me entertained, occupied (preoccupied too, instead of thinking too much), and on my feet. You know what they say: Oh well.
I'm not dwelling on that, certainly. As I say, I know I'm among the lucky ones.
376 masks?
I still don't have a #@$! mask, which is a problem, since the Governor has mandated that everyone in our State has to wear a mask in public. I wear jury-rigged ones made of the sleeves of T-shirts, which are very likely substantially useless except that they provide the appearance of conformity. I have ordered—get this—376 masks(!) online, but none of them have arrived yet.
That high number can be explained. Two months ago, I got online and ordered two lots of N95 masks, 160 per lot, and directed that they be shipped to my nurse friend. I thought I was being pretty clever. Later I was notified of a little catch—the delivery date would be as late as June 1. Even that date, I realize now, is probably dubious. I could have cancelled the order, but what the heck—I let it stand just in case it ends up working. She works in an intensive care unit, so the purchase won't be depriving medical personnel of the masks. Then there's a set of five masks I ordered off Etsy a month ago—the owner of the company has been in touch, and they're backlogged, of course—and the 50-pack of paper masks I ordered and are supposedly en route, and finally a reusable mask I ordered from MaxMax yesterday. Dan says he will mail that one today, but cautions that the mail has been taking longer than usual.
Carl Jung 101
My 86-year-old Mom's memory unit in Cambridge has seen two cases of COVID-19 so far, one a patient and one a staff member. My doctor brother is cautiously optimistic for her: her residence is pretty high-end, well-staffed and well-funded, and they have a reasonably spacious facility. They're taking appropriate cautions.
For many years my mother was a career counselor. Halfway through, she realized that many people get stuck in their careers because of unresolved psychological issues (an example might be someone who gets into conflicts with his bosses because of underlying resentments toward authority figures), so she got a certificate in counseling from the Washington School of Psychiatry so she'd be legitimately credentialed to counsel people with such problems. One of the tests she administered measured introversion and extroversion, which must be among the psychology pioneer Carl Jung's best-known concepts. She used to say that the best description of an introvert was somebody who "charges their batteries" when they're alone and expends energy when they're with other people, whereas an extrovert is the opposite, someone who charges their batteries when they're with others and expends energy when they're alone. Being an extrovert doesn't mean you don't like being alone; it's just that you probably don't want too much of it. As an introvert, I like being with other people a lot, but I definitely have my limit. If I have to socialize intensively for three days I'll be running on empty by the end of that time and desperately need some alone time. (Photo Shows used to be hard on me when I was an editor: I'd be energized the first day, maintaining during the second day, and thoroughly depleted and tired of the crowds by the end of the third day*.) Extroverts feel relaxed and comfortable in company. They can spend time alone, and might even enjoy it, but they reach their limit at some point and need to seek out others again.
The danger of introversion is that you live too much in your own head, too much in "your own little world" as the saying goes, and thoughts, impulses, and preoccupations can turn into obsessions because there's no one else to provide reality checks. The danger of excessive extroversion is that you can lose yourself—you see yourself only as others see you; you're defined by relationships. It's important for strong introverts to force themselves to make contact and create intimacy as a corrective, and it's important for strong extroverts to engage in introspection once in a while and get to know themselves away from the context of their many relationships. I always wanted to be a teacher, and it would have been the perfect occupation for me: I would have had a certain amount of forced contact with people, but within the context of structured relationships. It would have counterbalanced my natural introversion and any tendency to isolate.
Extroversion to introversion appears to be a spectrum rather than a state. You can actually be in the middle, neither one nor the other, in which case you probably think the whole concept is bogus. Or you can be a mild introvert or an extreme one, a mild extrovert or an extreme one. Finally, we can change over time. I'm not sure anyone could go from one extreme all the way to the other, but I've definitely gotten less introverted over the years: I used to be further from the midpoint and now I'm somewhat less so.
Stay-at-home and stick-in-the-mud
Even so, I'm finding "sheltering in place" to be almost...enjoyable. I've ratcheted up my attention to what you might call life hygiene—housework, living according to schedule, cooking—and I've made an effort to call and talk to someone at least once a day, or socialize with random neighbors on the road in front of my house where it's easy to stand eight feet apart. But I'm very mindful that some people are not finding it enjoyable, at all, but are suffering because of their apart-ness and alone-ness. For them, it can rise into the vicinity of an existential crisis...or descend into depression.
One last fun fact on the topic: introverts tend to understand extroverts a lot better than extroverts understand introverts. Some extroverts just think there's something wrong with introverts, and can tend to not like or trust them. Boo on that! God made all kinds of us, and there's nothing wrong with introverts. Where else would the tribe gets its solitary mountain men, its toll-takers (yes, even seeing thousands of people for four seconds at time, that's still a job that requires strong introverts), its spelunkers, its lighthouse keepers, its space-station astronauts—or, ahem, its writers? There are lots of occupations and activities that require people who can stand to be alone.
In my life, though, I think this is the first time that being an introvert has ever been socially advantageous. About time it came in handy.
Although I wish it had never happened, and I hope it will be over soon.
Hang in there my friends, and be safe and be well,
Mike
*I've related this story before, but I love it so I'll tell it again. At the Photo East show, my predecessor, the late David Alan Jay, who was a more extreme introvert than I am, would get intensely tired of being "on" for all the people who were chasing him for one reason or another and making demands on his attention, whether it was readers or authors or friends or manufacturers' reps (everyone wanted a "minute" with a magazine editor back in those days at the shows). So he would go to the Darkroom Innovations booth, where our friend Fred Newman had his gigantic 20x24 view camera on display. David would get under the dark cloth behind the enormous camera as if he were taking a look through the groundglass...and then he'd just stay there! Half an hour, 45 minutes, an hour—he just periodically needed to be alone for a while. It was his hideout right there on the show floor. You could be standing ten feet from him and not realize he was there. Makes me laugh, thinking back. R.I.P. David.
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