There was a moment ten years ago when I was working on a doctorate, working a full-time job, and being the stay-at-home parent for two under-five kids.

There was a moment a year or two after that when I was raising a puppy, two kids under five, and working a full-time job.

Now I don’t have any kids under five. Or under ten. And I’m not mid-divorce or mid-doctorate.

But one thing that dawns on me tonight is that I just don’t multi-task as well. When I’m in the middle of typing something and something interrupts me, I can’t step away, handle the thing, and return mid-sentence and keep typing more or less without even thinking about it.

Now, the context switches are rather expensive. If I’m interrupted, I often won’t even realize to come back. And if I do, I won’t remember what I was doing or quite enough to pick up where I left off.

Maybe a big part of this is that I’m just a lot older than I used to be.

It’s been fully a month of “dying to post” during the day and “nothing to say” by the time evening arrives.

— § —

If you’re someone like me, you don’t realize just how “solo” your life is. You go about your days and you get out sometimes and you think to yourself, “this is fine, I’m not lonely” and really you don’t feel like you are, and it seems like everything is fine.

But then you get a puppy and you realize two things.

First, you suddenly can’t go just anywhere, anywhen, because puppies can’t just be left home alone, you can’t just take dogs into places for the most part, and until they’re fully vaccinated, it’s not possible to get a dog-sitter. Instead, you need to rely on, and socialize with, people you know directly, in your home or theirs.

Second, and illuminating the first point, you realize you don’t know very many people directly. If you’re like me, the number approaches nil in surprising ways. There are a few direct contacts, but once you exclude them either for today-contingency reasons or more permanently for nature-of-the-relationship reasons, you’re out of people.

And then you understand that in fact you are very much a solo, isolated act, and that the primary way you socialize and stave off loneliness is by going to the grocery store and the gas station and so on.

— § —

These are not comfortable realizations.

— § —

There are a couple of threads of thought at play right now.

First is wondering whether it’s (a) possible and (b) desirable to actually go out and form a bunch of direct personal connections. If I was on the therapy couch, this is where I’d be asked about a statement like that and I’d answer by saying that in general, associating with people makes both me and them crazy. I think they’re fucking rotten jerks and they think I’m a fucking rotten jerk and then we spend less time together and then we spend no time together and we all feel relief that we don’t have to maintain a facade about it.

Does this mean I shouldn’t be a dog owner? Or does this mean that I somehow have to become similar enough to people to get along with them?

I guess the other is wondering whether I really want to do this long term. I’ve had dogs in the past and I don’t remember such a feeling that there was no life ahead.

I wasn’t ready to feel that I have to give up any and all plans, habits, hopes, dreams for anything other than sitting at home. And yet that’s how I feel right now… as though I have to just find and befriend dog people and then what we will do is have endless dog play dates.

But a night at the bar? No. Visits to the gym? No. Shopping? No. Road trips? No. The library? No. The arts festival? No.

How did I handle this in the past? Why don’t I remember anything about it?

— § —

This “I don’t remember anything about it” thing is actually a deeper underlying thing that merits some consideration (which it probably, despite merit, won’t get).

There are many things I’ve done in my life. So many.

I know, because I have a mental checklist.

But I don’t actually remember how to do any of them, and they all seem impossible and bewildering to me now. I have no memory of doing them, I just know I did them.

University. Grad school. Rock and roll tours. Writing books. Marriage. Parenthood. Owning dogs. Road trips.

I have photos. I don’t remember anything in the photos, though I see myself in them. Surely this isn’t normal.

Is this the early stages of dementia? Do I need therapy? Have I repressed all memory of things in my life pre-divorce? Or actually, I suppose it would be pre-last-three-years-of-marriage.

I do know those last three years were hell, of the sort that could easily permanently break your brain.

Maybe mine got broken.

I don’t know. I guess I’ll stop writing now.

I mean, therapy is covered by my health insurance, which seems like an incredibly fortunate position to be in, yet at the same time the older I get the less I think therapy is real and the more I think it’s bullshit, and also at the same time, I really have no idea how I would do it anyway having a dog, as having a dog even makes peeing or tying your shoelaces impossible (well, not impossible, but they each take 30-40 minutes and any number of things will be destroyed as you make the attempt).

— § —

Maybe I am just going fucking crazy.

Probably that’s it.