My resolution for 2024 is simple; get out more*. And I don’t mean clubbing or partying, I simply mean getting out of the house, seeing more people and relying less on my phone as the great connector to the outside world.
For most of last year, I kept to myself. It may not seem that way from how I present myself on the internet, but I did. It was necessary at first, but then it became habitual. In a kind of post-Covid slump, I had very little driving me to socialise or participate. I had been off drink for a year, separate to that, but perhaps not unrelated, I became quite anxious, particularly at the idea of big parties or birthdays.
I would panic about what to wear, how I would get to the location and then how I would get home. I was afraid of the strangers I’d meet, the acquaintances I’d let down with stifling conversation and of being a drag to my friends. This is a lot to worry about before you open up the front door.
Some of this I can explain myself. My fear of strangers is valid; strangers ask inappropriate questions about my disability and they grab my chair, two actions that have been normalised or framed as banter. But the rest of it, I came to understand that it was a mild case of anhedonia, and it’s something that a lot of us are experiencing after living in and out of lockdowns in an intense period of time.
Anhedonia is the inability to feel pleasure, and the bones of the Covid lockdowns was to remove ourselves from the lives we once led. Stay indoors, stay away from people, stay away from the things you live. Anhedonia became an unwritten law and, in a way, we cocooned, without knowing when it would be safe for us to emerge. For elderly people or people living with chronic illnesses, it still doesn’t feel safe. Anhedonia may sound quite extreme, but it is a very normal reaction to a sustained feeling of restriction. Some of us bounded back while others are still tentatively dipping a toe.
I remember thinking during one of the lockdowns that some people will never emerge from this socially, their old ways retired, and I guess I was that person for a little while. My resolution for last year was to read a book a week, and I did that. I also watched way more TV than I did in 2020 or 2021, and thanks to a pesky injury, I wasn’t allowed to swim or exercise for the guts of six months.
For me, 2023 was a lockdown in itself, and I would panic when the big social events came up. Sometimes I pushed through and had a great time. Other times I worked myself up into a stupor, tears washing my makeup away until a little voice in my head told me to practices some compassion and said, “get into your pyjamas and look after yourself”. Listening to that voice more, I took a more gentle approach to living, which sadly some people didn’t fully grasp, but I discovered that other people were going through these same paces, or that they could appreciate that we don’t all have to move in the same way to remain friends.
On the Sunday night of All Together Now this August, a pal and I were done, so we ventured away from everyone sucking the last bit of craic out of the raw teat of the festival, we got chips. She told me that this is the night that the most damage is done, psychologically. We push ourselves for one last mile, thinking that we’re the same bulldozers that we were in our 20s.
Afraid of being old, afraid of being seen as no craic, we drink more and back ourselves into a corner. The version of ourselves who went to bed early and is warm in a sleeping bag is mock the version of ourselves that stayed out. There’s no shame in knowing your limits, but it’s a skill to recognise your limits and to listen to them. And as a very wise friend of mine asked at Other Voices, “is the biggest slay getting a good night’s sleep?” Yes, it is. Sometimes. When you need it.
I think what I’m describing is balance. We don’t need to be on 100% of the time, but we don’t need to hide away either. It’s fine to be the type of person who only gets into the sea to your knees, and it’s fine to be the person who goes to bed early on the Sunday night of a three-day festival. This doesn’t mean that you’re not good company, you’re just preserving the good things about yourself for another day instead of feeling drained for weeks on end.
When I finished my 52nd book of 2023 (Crudo by Olivia Laing), something in me shifted and I knew that whatever cocoon I was still clutching onto was now shed. I don’t mean that lightly. Between lots of therapy, rest, lone time, antidepressants and hormones, I built up the tools, the armour, the understanding and the compassion to fully return to the world as a beautiful little moth. Drawn to the light and leaving trails of dust behind on every surface. I’m not who I was in 2019 - are any of us? - but I’m happy to be the person I am now.
A big part of this change was spending less time online. Years ago, a colleague of mine said something that still whirls around in my brain. When it comes to posting about ourselves or sharing photos or life updates, “what are we trying to prove?” Treating social media like a noticeboard, we sound our news like a foghorn, asking to be liked and validated. But why?
I’m not above saying that I used to addicted to social media. I got a real thrill from the attention and the audience, but the reactions I got online became more valuable to me than real life interactions. I couldn’t sit alone with my thoughts, I had to share them - constantly. With friends, we didn’t really catch up anymore, we just said, “I know, I saw your post about it”. Social media has, partially, killed the art of finding things out about people. We don’t learn or ask as much anymore, we are shown.
I deleted my Twitter earlier on in the year - it felt like it was becoming a particularly evil place - and just before Christmas, I started my Threads account. But after a few days, I reached the conclusion that perhaps we shouldn’t be exposed to so many opinions. My analogy for posting on Twitter or Threads is that it’s like knowingly walking by a flasher in a trench coat and getting annoyed that you saw genitals. Of course, the flasher should know not to flash, but that just isn’t the society we live in.
With the new year, we see a lot of posts that round up the past 12 months, and I thought of my friend and her observation of “what are we trying to prove?” My more cynical side observes that some people like to show us how rich they are; the meals, the holidays, the clothes, the houses. My sympathetic side, but still with a dash of cynicism, sees that they want to prove that yes, they have friend; yes, they have partners; yes, their lives are full, because maybe they had none of those things at one point and it really, really hurt. We may be proving to ourselves that things have worked out okay.
But maybe it’s all harmless. Maybe this is a more convenient way of presenting a photo album, a wander through our highlights, and a reflection of our lows. From my own experience, I never actually got what I needed from the incessant posting. I wanted connection. I wanted community. I wanted for someone to maybe tell me I’m pretty and I definitely wanted loads and loads of people to think I’m funny. By putting so much effort into that online, it all fall apart offline.
So, now. A new year. A new reading challenge (can she read 60 books this year? Probably). A new outlook; stay cute, scroll less, read more. And because it’s Friday and there’s joy to be had, I’ll go out (but be back home in time for a good night’s sleep).
*It’s important to add here, just in case any of my friends beat me to the post, a tarot reader told me the following things that I need to do: I need to socialise more, stop wearing black and be funny again. So, this all didn’t come from nowhere. Tarot Trish got the ball rolling.
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