During the pandemic we forgot how to be social.
We stayed home, we avoided gatherings - social and otherwise, and we gave up gathering with anyone outside our tiny bubble.
For many of us, already introverted and uncomfortable in large groups, it started out as a blessing. We didn’t have to force ourselves out into the world, or ration and schedule our social interactions to avoid psychic overload.
But over time the isolation damaged even the most solitary individuals. The lack of interaction in any way scraped away the layer of social grace that lubricated our day-to-day social contacts. The casual greeting in the grocery store was replaced with a masked-and-distanced pickup. Non-emergency medical appointments were canceled. Office chitchat, often a source of rudimentary social contact, disappeared as we increasingly moved to working from home, our only contact with co-workers being all-hands Zoom calls that were tightly focused on the job at hand and left no room for idle chatter. Even if we did interact with another human we were both hidden behind a mask, our voices muffled and our expressions obscured.
In short, we were adrift.
Social interaction requires a certain level of civility, of give-and-take, of reading clues in tone, expression, and body language. Two-plus years of isolation, years spent not exercising those social muscles, allowed those skills to atrophy.
It was the ultimate example of “Use it or lose it,” and we lost it.
How that loss affected my creative life was brought home to me this week in rather dramatic fashion - because I spent a few days at a creative gathering and OH MY GAWD have I missed it!
Humans are social creatures. I’ve talked about this before. Even my seriously-introverted husband needs to see people now and then. In the Before Times that might be nothing more than a couple minutes small talk with the checker at the supermarket, or greeting an acquaintance he passed while getting his daily walk.
The pandemic took all of that, and left us floundering, trying to find new ways of getting a minimum of human - and creative - interaction.
Steve and I were luckier than many because we had each other. Having another writer to talk to helped, but it was still only one other person. The same person you lived with all day, every day. It didn’t offer a lot of variety.
In the past we had a community of writers who we saw every week. Sometimes we talked writing, sometimes we talked business, sometimes we just talked about whatever goofy thing came up, as friends do. However, shortly before the lockdowns started the people who held our group together moved away, and the group wavered. Before we could rebuild the pandemic hit, and our gatherings evaporated.
And that’s where we have been ever since.
Until this week.
A few weeks ago two of our extended group of writers proposed an informal retreat. Come stay at the coast for a few days, have your own personal retreat, and gather in the evenings to talk about whatever topic the group found interesting.
They were careful to keep the group small, and to invite only people who already knew and were comfortable with each other. It was honestly a curated gathering, designed to give us all a chance to test our social limits.
The first night was a bit frenetic as we saw friends for the first time in literal years. There was the initial awkwardness as we tentatively worked out the tolerance for being unmasked in a group setting, and clumsy greetings. Can I hug this person? Shake hands? Mask on or off? Share snacks? So many things that we had become comfortable with before were now new and awkward again.
An 'artsy' photo with reflections (to respect everyone's privacy) of our group. Having a bunch of unrelated people in a room, sharing a discussion, is something that's been missing for too long.
Things had changed. WE had changed - and sometimes not for the better.
We quickly slipped into a lively conversation, but there were points where it seemed to lose focus, where a single individual dominated a topic, where everyone tried to talk at once.
We had forgotten how to have a conversation in a group of people without a leader to guide and curate the discussion. We were all so anxious to share what we had learned, our experiences, successes, and failures, and our social interaction muscles were so atrophied, that the conversation sometimes threatened to careen out of control and plunge over a cliff.
And yet.
Everyone was so happy to be there, to be having ANY kind of conversation that touched on the creative endeavor that was central to each of our lives, that no one seemed upset or unhappy. We all were anxious for the next night.
We gathered the next night, and the social lubrication returned. Perhaps not in full force, but it was clearly evident. The dominant voices of the previous night were somewhat muted, their manic enthusiasm dampened slightly as though the previous night’s discussion had breached the mental dam and then subsided. The quiet members found their voices, found the courage to speak up, and made space for themselves in the discussion.
I am writing this while sitting with some of the friends who were here for the retreat. I have a perfectly lovely office at home, but I eagerly accepted their invitation to join them for their afternoon writing. Being in this place, with these people, with the energy of four writers each in their own space putting words into our stories and essays, feels like a long drink of cold water after days in the desert. I can feel my creativity, my soul, unfolding with each passing minute.
There is another gathering tonight, before everyone packs up and heads home, and I for one cannot wait to be in that room. The energy, the generosity, the shared passion, has been lacking for a long time and it fed me in ways I didn’t even know I needed.
And just for fun, here's the view from the deck of the house where we gathered.
A week ago I would have told you I was looking forward to seeing old friends and getting a chance to catch up on their lives. I would not have predicted my actual reaction, the feeling of feeding my creativity just by being in the presence of other creatives.
But that is what happened. I have gained an immeasurable amount of psychic energy from the last three days. I have had the need for this kind of connection brought home for me in unblinking reality.
I need my tribe.
I would bet you do, too. Reach out, find your tribe, the people who provide energy, comfort, insight, and information. Make time for your tribe, for the interactions that feed your creativity.
It may be one of the most important things you can do for your post-pandemic recovery. I know it was for mine.