I spent New Years Eve home alone, playing World of Warcraft. Not your traditional fin d’année fête, but it suited me fine. I’m kind of in a WoW-y zone right now, and my vacation is rapidly coming to an end, and so there is a kind of logic to squeezing in all the play I can before the Elite Work Dragon starts eating my free time.
What I just said there? That’s BS. Something’s got to change. I spend too much time alone. My bent for finding contentment in solitude is often a vital salve, and one that I wish more people would learn to sometimes avail themselves of. But for me it has become too potent a drug, a vaccination against the impulse to go out and form new relationships and develop the ones I have. Relationships that I desperately need: I’m 36, unmarried, not dating, childless, and don’t even have any friends who want to share my company on New Year’s G-D Eve. I am grateful for the friends I have, and for the time they can spare me, and I recognize that I am luckier than many. But it isn’t enough for me. I accept that my loneliness is my own fault, and I must be the one who does the work to solve it. I’m not sure what the solution is yet, but for good or for ill, I have decided that the first step is to stop pretending I’m not lonely.
Thanks for listening. Happy New Year.
