A year ago if you asked me how well I enjoyed my own company, on a scale of 1 to 10 I would place myself somewhere between 9 and 9.5, the 0.5 my attempt at modesty. Pressed for evidence, I would point to the various things I did alone without so much as a flutter of an eyelid — Football Manager, a substantial list of feeds subscribed to in my Feedly, a number of series I watch obsessively and any number of books I have my nose in from time to time.
That is why I find the sense of listlessness I begin to feel mid-way through my two weeks away from work doubly disconcerting. Far from being painstakingly planned and flawlessly executed, the two week holiday happens to me suddenly, the result of a perfect storm of failing to request the days (hoping I can convince S to go away with me for a week) and a month at work which frankly seems to have come from hell. I barely have time to send out the notes from the last meeting on the 21st before I have to leave the building, a compromise which still leaves me having lost three days of holiday.
I do manage to hatch a cunning plan to make the most of the enforced holiday — the first of the weeks till after Christmas up in my corner of Scotland and then a quick hop down south to London till the New Year.
What my plan fails to account for is S’s Spanish jaunt getting off to a dodgy start, the absence of wifi at their lodgings meaning that communication is at a premium, limited to the occasional text message sent by international text. The combination of loads of time on my hand, and a limited number of places I can go to at short notice drives my mind into overdrive, what-ifs, maybes and should haves jostling for primacy in my mind. I find myself twiddling my thumbs, counting the hours and finding little comfort in the things that used to fill my alone time, hardly the most productive or healthy use of my time and energy
This sense of discomfiture at the absence of someone is one of the things I have perhaps struggled most with over the last few months, particularly as this thing with S has evolved. Part of me realises that there is a balance somewhere, between retaining individuality and yet becoming a collective that is greater than the sum of its parts.
I suppose NCIS:LA’s Nell Jones (Renée Felice Smith) captures this most succinctly in the Season 8 Christmas episode, “Tidings We Bring”, when in a conversation over a gift she gives to Eric Beale (played by Barrett Foa), she describes them as pendulums which keep time individually but when placed on the same wall sync up.
#RelationshipGoals?
A Geek's Life 