Rand Wacker

With my wife being gone for so long, my involved schedule with work and school, and the fact that literally 80% of our good friends are leaving/have left the Bay Area in the past several months, I’ve been experiencing long periods of loneliness, an emotion that I haven’t contended with much in my adult life. In some ways, this has caused me to re-think some pretty fundamental beliefs of my personality. I’ve always considered myself to be a bit of an introvert, but when I need to I force myself to be extroverted. I’ve always been comfortable spending time by myself, enjoy living and traveling alone, and have at one time or another been well-described by the famous Clerks interchange, “You hate people! … Yeah, but I love gatherings.” By no means do I think I would fall in to the typical extrovert category of people that are always the life of the party, the Animal House “damn glad to meet you” hand-shaker, or would I make a very good used car salesman. It seems that while I’m happy spending time by myself, I have a definite need for inter-personal interaction with people. Human beings are, after all, social creatures. I remember a few years ago when I was sick with a particularly bad throat infection and I couldn’t leave my apartment or even talk on the phone for an entire week. At the end of that cycle I came to the conclusion that I would not do well by myself on a desert island.

I need to figure out how to fix this, because wherever Lonely dwarf treads his buddy Grumpy dwarf is sure to follow, and I’m spending way too much time with that unsavory little character. It seems that for me any combination of stress, lack of sleep, loneliness, and various other crummy events will compound on each other to form a permanent rain cloud over my mood. This is a bad cycle for me, as bad moods usually reinforce bad moods. This downward spiral is well known by my friends, and stories of Rand’s grumpiness are somewhat legendary. I need to avoid reinforcing that view.

So what’s the fix? I wish I knew. I can manage my stress through adequate sleep and exercise, quality food always helps elevate my mood, and spending time with the few friends I have left in the area is a big help. I think I need to change my emotional frame though, and stop letting grump feed on grump. There’s a lot to be said for the “just get over it!” method of psychiatry, and maybe that’s what I should try to do.