It’s Friday, and this time it really is the end of the workweek for me.  I’m pleased by that fact.  Indeed, I came very close to abstaining from work even today.  I’m just beat from this week, and I’m still not over whatever this virus is that I have.  But I figured I might as well go into the office for the week’s last hurrah.  It’s a slightly shorter workday than usual, anyway, and that helps me find to will to proceed.

I’m not sure what to write, today.  I expect I’ll try to make this brief, since my energy level is rather low.  There have been fewer “likes” for my blog posts this week than usual, and I’m not too surprised.  I’ve been even grumpier and more negative than is my norm, because I’ve been ill, and people seem to prefer blogs with “uplifting” messages…whether they have anything to do with reality or not.

Also, the medicine I take to treat my symptoms—especially the decongestants—tends to make me more tense than usual (and that’s saying something!), and that doesn’t help make me more pleasant, I’m sure.

I guess the positive of this is, if I feel better by Monday, I’ll probably write at least a little more enjoyable a post, so that’s something for regular, loyal readers to anticipate optimistically.  I don’t know what topic or topics I’ll address, but then again, I still don’t even know what topic I’ll address here today—as you can probably tell.

I’ve gotten on the train, now, and honestly, I’m already beginning to regret having decided to go in.  I’m just so physically tired.  But as I think I’ve mentioned before, being at the house is not really much more relaxing than being at the office, and at least at the office I can sometimes, occasionally, feel that I’m doing something useful.  Also, at the office I have interpersonal interactions, which are at least a bit interesting, and there are even people there that I like.

It’s an interesting fact that I’ve gradually realized about myself that I’ve never had friends that I made just for the sake of having friends.  I had friends, of course, good ones, but they were people I met at school, people I saw every day, and so I got to know them during the course of doing our other, mutual, purpose-oriented stuff.

If I hadn’t had school to attend—if I’d been home-schooled, for instance, or if my family had moved frequently from place to place—I don’t know if I would have made any real friends at all.  As it was, though, my family stayed in the house in which I grew up right up until after I’d left for college, and of course, I was the youngest of three, so my home and school environments were pretty consistent, and I ended up making very good friends indeed, particularly through junior high and high school.

Then in college it was comparatively easy to make friends, because I lived in the dorms, and had a roommate.  In fact, my roommate and I were able to get along with each other pretty well, so we stayed roommates throughout my time in college.  And we made some other good friends along the way, and eventually, by senior year, five of us shared an apartment.

I feel bad that, for instance, my daughter’s university experience up to now has been basically done from home due to the pandemic.  I would not have wanted to miss out on my own college experiences, though there were also many heartbreaking and difficult things that happened in college as well.  But, of course, I met my kids’ mother in college, in the orchestra; we both played cello.  I can’t regret that.

Now, unfortunately, the people at work are too different from me, and are in different situations, and I have trouble finding anyone that I could expect to spend much time with outside of work.  And I’m not very good at doing social interactions that aren’t embedded in some other, more purpose-based endeavor.  I think I’ve always been like that, but it didn’t present that many obstacles, because I’d always been pretty successful, and the purpose-based endeavors I was involved in were populated by people with whom I had at least some things in common.  Then, of course, for a while I was married, and my ex-wife tends to be a much more social person than I am.  And once we had kids, I had my family, and that was all the social life I needed or desired, and more than I probably would have ever thought I would have.

Unfortunately, now I don’t have my family around me, and my former career is thoroughly wrecked, and I don’t have the skill or even the comprehension of how to gather supportive friends or people with shared interests, so I’m pretty much adrift on my own.  Of course, from a certain point of view, everyone is always adrift and alone anyway, no matter how many people are around one, but humans in general do seem to receive actual, measurable benefits from being in a community, which makes sense in a highly social primate species.

Whereas “Nexus-13, alien, changelings” like me are, well…come to think of it, I just don’t know any “Nexus-13, alien, changelings” like me.  So I don’t even know whether I’d be able to make friends with one if I met one.  Possibly not.

But, at least, I have the (I expect) uninterrupted weekend before me, and no pressing responsibilities, so hopefully I’ll be able to rest, if not to sleep.  I hope all of you have a good weekend, too.