The Dreams Are Over

I'm done.

It's been four years since I recovered from a serious medical condition, and as you will recall, I had a laundry list of things I wanted to do going into 2020.  I wanted to travel abroad - specifically, to Paris, where I wanted to meet in person a woman living there that I had befriended through social media and at the time, I thought I might be in love with her.  I had just gotten a new reporting job and I thought my writing, ahem, career was back on track again.  I had made a New Year's resolution to go to the gym more often.   I had joined the Society of Professional Journalists.  Things were finally looking up.

Then COVID hit.      

I don't need to tell you again that I ended up going nowhere as a result of the pandemic, my reporting job was confined to remote coverage of online public meetings, and efforts to remain connected to friends I already knew outside social media fell flat.  When I first decided that it was time to quit on my plans, back in March 2022, when it seemed that the pandemic had no end (I'd had the Omicron bug), I said so.  I started bailing out immediately.  I shelved my plans for foreign travel indefinitely,  I resigned from the Society of Professional Journalists,  I continued to avoid public places as much as I could, and  I also gave up on pet issues I had always championed, like high-speed rail, because I saw no benefit in continuing to push for such things.  So I unsubscribed for a lot of e-mail lists.   But I didn't think I was going to quit everything.

But I did.  Well, not absolutely everything, but pretty much.

Since the pandemic more or less ended, I thought I had given up enough, as I wrote this past May.   Since then, I've doubled down on not going into New York City often despite my proximity to the city, as bus service from my town to Manhattan remains spotty at best.  I had planned to go to the 9/11 museum sometime this fall but I eventually put that plan on hold and I don't see any reason to put it off that hold.  I pretty much have to stay close to home due to personal household matters, none of which have come close to getting resolved.  I still cover public meetings for my reporting job remotely from home, and I'm mostly just going through the motions.  Early in the pandemic, I missed being in the center of the action and was eager to return to covering public meetings in person.  I lost that desire when Delta COVID hit.

Meanwhile, efforts to meet some friends in person for coffee or something fizzled out, and I've pretty much stopped even trying to reach out to anyone.  I don't call anyone anymore.  I don't try to contact any longtime friend like the ones I had in college.  One of them - whom I considered my best friend back in college - dropped out of Facebook and I neither know nor care what became of him.

And of course, I also quit Twitter (now X), which you already know about.

So, yes, the funk I said I was in seven months ago has gotten funkier.  And when I say I have stopped trying to contact everyone, that includes this woman in Paris - which I have no plans to see - as well.  I had sworn off romance years before when all of my senseless pursuit of women who were either already taken or didn't want to be left me nowhere, but I actually thought I might be falling for this woman.  But my passion has long since cooled, as I haven't spoken to her on the phone since May. May 2020.  In the meantime, another woman I know through social media expressed interest in meeting me, and I thought I might have a chance to do so by going to see her in Connecticut, where she lives.  I even thought I might be in love with her.  No, that didn't work out either.  And my romantic feelings for her?  I woke up the next morning, and they were gone.

Oh yeah, you might remember that I hoped to go abroad in 2023.  It's late December.  It didn't happen.  I said if I didn't go abroad in 2023, I would likely never go at all.  Well . . .  

You know, it's funny how I always seem to have great expectations that lead me back to where I started.  I have mentioned several ladyfriends of mine on this blog, some by name and others anonymously.   Well, I was deeply in love with one of them - I won't say whom - who already had a boyfriend, whom she ended up marrying.  Last year, she and her husband - now the parents of a little girl - moved to another country.  They moved away to escape the misogyny, the homophobia (because what if their little girl turns out to be lesbian or bisexual?), and the awesome power of the MAGA movement that might yet return Trump to the White House.  They're happy, healthy, and free in a country where any woman can get an abortion (Dobbs was the final straw for them).   Before they escaped America - something I probably won't be able to do if Trump does get back in - I would look at pictures of them on my friend's Facebook page and, remembering I was in love with her once, looked at her husband one time and thought, "That could have been me!"

And then a little voice inside my head - not the kind people have to take medication for - said, "No, it couldn't!"  As always, that little voice was right.  I don't think I was really in love with her.

Ahh, so what?  Like anyone else, I've had dreams, though sometimes I had trouble figuring out what those dreams were - what I wanted to be, whom I wanted to be with, and all that.  I kept changing my mind about what I wanted to do with the rest of my life until so much time had gone by that, whatever I wanted to do, I'd done something else.  Dreams gave way to fantasies - the sort of Walter Mitty-style daydreaming in which one pretends to be someone different and have a different life.  But that's not healthy, isn't it?  I want reality now.  I think I demand it!      

Also, I think I need a cat.

So that's it.  My dreams are over.  I have reached emotional exhaustion.  I look forward to nothing in 2024.  And I'm afraid I'm going to need lots and lots and lots of rest.

But I have some good news.  My blog will continue.  So I'll still be here.