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The pandemic isn’t over, but right now feels like a different stage from last fall, something liminal where I’m hopeful that I’ll have a vaccine by the end of summer and may feel comfortable taking baby steps back towards rejoining the world. I am not the sort who will go from home-for-over-a-year to dining-at-a-restaurant in one fell swoop.

Refinery29 had an article recently checking in on introverts. I have been told that the pandemic is easier for me because I don’t like the leave the house anyway. That is true—I mean, the not leaving my house part. But I do enjoy seeing friends and family. And, at the very least, I enjoy large doses of alone time, something I haven’t gotten in over a year.

I can go in the bedroom and close the door, but I am cognizant that there are still people around. I am someone whose favourite sound is silence, so this year has been both easy and hard. Easy because I recognize my privilege, and hard because everyone’s life changed. And change is hard.

I draw my energy from that alone time. It powers me through all social interactions, which are still happening under my definition of a social interaction. I may not be leaving the house, but I am having more Zoom calls or phone calls than ever. I spent this year talking to people more than usual, it just wasn’t face-to-face. My online book club went from every other week to every week. I added new friends, all met in virtual spaces, while keeping in closer contact than I ever have with others.

I thought the article was interesting because it talked about the ways people changed. And I definitely feel like a different person during this pandemic than I was beforehand. (Who was that woman who thought nothing of packing in with people on the Metro?) But I’m still an introvert. Like Cats, now and forever.

Are you still the same—introverted or extroverted—though the pandemic?

A friend reshared this old isolation well-being list on Facebook this week. Most are things that I’ve done the whole year. (Yay for drinking water!) But I loved two things on the list:

1. Do one thing you’ll be glad you did later
2. Do one thing just because you want to

I’ve seen the first one written in other ways on various life advice lists: Do one thing you’ll be happy you did ten years from now. That is a very tall order. I have zero clue what I’ll be happy I did ten minutes from now much less ten years from now. But there are plenty of small tasks that I put off daily because they’re annoying, and I know I would feel good at the end of the day if they were done.

And the second one also is a favourite inclusion on various life lists, though I really like that wording. I often get to the end of my day and feel like I spent 98% of it doing required tasks or things to make other people happy. That was the impulse for #15Best—to take 15 minutes per day for myself. But that time is feeling a little rote. I need more impulsive happy moments. Just because.

But the doing is actually the less interesting part to me. I wonder how I would feel if I kept a list daily of the thing I took care of or the thing I did just because to reflect on at the end of the month. Was cleaning the dead plant out of the flower pot worth it? (Yes, probably.) Am I still happy that I grabbed that handful of jelly beans just because? (Maybe less so in retrospect.)

I’m playing with that idea, mostly because I think humans are terrible at predicting what will make us feel satisfied in the future. Myself included.

I’m reading a book—The Safe Place by Anna Downes—and I learned a new word: Querencia. It’s a term from bullfighting (I think?) that refers to the space in the ring where the bull goes to regroup and feel safe. A ring is a circle, and there is nothing special about any particular space. But the bull chooses a place where he feels safe—despite any tangible reason to feel safe—as a favoured spot. It’s where he draws his strength.

Beorn designated the corner closest to the basement door as his querencia. He naps there, sometimes with his eyes open, watching me, and other times resting and flicking his ears, listening for the twins to come upstairs. There is nothing different about that corner except that he chose it.

I realized how much my bed is an emotional querencia. I go there to think, regroup, relax in the evening. It would be more comfortable to read on the sofa, but I usually head up and make a little nest of glasses of water and books and notebooks around me on the bed. I’m aware this behaviour probably adds to my insomnia, but it’s where I recharge.

Where is your querencia?

There was an article going around a week or two ago that everyone was gushing about. It was a celebration of cold calling—picking up the phone and just calling a friend instead of setting up a time to chat. The idea is to reintroduce spontaneity into the experience, and to return to the delight of being surprised to find a friend on the other end of the line when you pick up.

Sort of like one of the things I miss: bumping into people you know when you’re out-and-about, running errands. I haven’t had a chance meeting in the library in over a year, and I do miss that.

But I don’t miss cold calling. I have recurring calls set up with friends, and I love it because I can plan for it. I’m in the right frame of mind when we start talking, not feeling torn between wanting to catch up and wanting to finish the task I was planning to do. One of my least favourite things is talking to someone when it’s clear that I don’t have their attention, so I never want to do that to someone else.

What do you think? Are you pro-spontaneous conversation or do you like to be texted first to make sure it’s a good time to talk?

Norton Juster died last week on Monday. The timing was strange because I had been having an email conversation with a new friend about Norton after telling a story about him in our Zoom book club. She had a connection to him, too, through her late husband.

I told her that Norton popped up in my life in random places, almost like a flag planted to let me know that I was on the right path. It was funny, really, because I almost always saw him when my life was at some sort of crossroads. But now that last time will be the last time. There will be no more magical coincidences leading to conversations or dinners together.

I am so lucky. Most people never get to meet their hero, but I got to see him multiple times. The last time, I brought the twins to meet him at a mutual friend’s house. I wrote a long journal entry about it, but never posted about that dinner. I don’t know why now.

I found this quote in it that feels particularly poignant this week. We were talking during dessert:

I asked him if it was difficult to be traveling right now for the 50th anniversary of the book, and he admitted that he wasn’t getting enough time to write. Time to write! The same problem I had been grappling with as I considered summer vacation and what I would do about projects that won’t be completed before the twins are out of school. And that was my moment; that tiny recharge I needed. The reminder that it never ends, that desire to have more time. That you’ll chase it your whole life on one hand, but knowing that, you can also let time go, be in the moment, realize that there will never be enough of it.

Rest easy, Mr. Juster. You taught me that anything is possible. And while I have thanked you for that on numerous occasions, like time, there is never a point of enough when it comes to gratitude.