Day 158

I feel empty inside. Just a big bowl of "meh". My drive to do much of anything all but gone. Yeah, I get up every morning and walk down to my office to go to work, but there is no enthusiasm in it. Same goes for most of my non-working time. I mostly sit on the couch and watch TV. This is not like me. I used to be very active – I worked out regularly – but now I just sit, feeding my monkey brain an endless supply of YouTube videos. 

COVID is likely a contributing factor to my malaise. Being home home all day, every day isn't great for me. I need to be around other people, like physically in the same room with them. There is something about the energy of being physically near someone that, for whatever reason, charges my batteries. What's interesting is that it needs to be a person, or people, that I'm comfortable with. That means being with people that I already know. There are a couple of exceptions but 95% of the time this is true. Conversely, I do not find any comfort in large groups of mostly strangers. My social awkwardness comes out for all the world to see in these situations. To protect myself, I will usually hide in my iPhone convinced that I look a lot less pathetic staring at my phone's small screen than trying to talk to someone who clearly has no desire to talk to me. One of the cool kids I am definitely not. 

This all sounds very dark and brooding, so maybe I'm not doing as well as I thought I was. Or it could just be that I don't know right now which way is up. Or maybe I'm just so desperate to come up with something to write about that I'm making stuff up to fit the narrative that I assume others project onto me. Whatever it is, I still feel empty. Like a robot with the same instruction program running in an infinite loop. There is no joy or sadness, there is just...this. Nothing. Emptiness. Rice cakes.