social | cariejenson

My writing group gathers every Sunday morning. Well, not quite a group of us. It’s normally two people with other characters joining the melee on days they wake up. If it’s a morning of just two, we eat, we discuss, and we write. When there are more, the conversational tangents run far and wide. They all relate to writing, or to what we are writing, but we have a tendency to fall deep into the rabbit hole of “what ifs” and “then there’s” as writers. One idea connects to another until the dots of light come together in an interesting constellation of thoughts.

It’s fascinating to sit back and find out where we will end up. A conversation about Anne Lamott takes us to the varying waves of divorce among midlife couples and on to the pain of revisions. [Note: I tied it together as stages of our writing. Writing late into life, surviving writer’s block, and learning to let go of it all.] We may get fifteen minutes of full pen to paper time on such occasions, but that’s okay. Sometimes you need the mental break. Your brain needs to wander amongst the words of others.

I get lost in my own head. There’s a lot up there to think about. One color change to the sky can alter every piece of minutia for the universe, and I need to figure it out. I need to put the puzzle pieces in place. So it’s good for me to spend time with others. It could also be why I have so many hobbies. There’s a drive to keep myself out of my own wonderland of thoughts. I put up the “Do Not Disturb” sign on my brain and do something real, including being around real people. I am very comfortable removing myself from the world at large and living in my own personal version of the galaxy. Solitary is easy for people like me. It’s the interaction that breaks us.

I recommend the challenge of tangents for breakfast. Don’t try to steer the conversation. Let it go. Glancing blows off the circle of your ideas can turn them in so many different directions. One such instance a few years back forced me to find my voice again. An insistent friend hinted until the idea was my own, driving me forward into the writing life. I can revel in my thoughts, finally putting my worlds on paper and sharing them with people who won’t judge me for red-skinned giants living in a golden-hued landscape. It might just be a statement about the evils of greed, but I won’t know until I get to breakfast.

I need to admit something right now. I am not a good roommate. I detested being a roommate or having a roommate even when delineated in college housing bylaws or by the size of my paycheck in comparison to my mortgage and expenses. I despise the situation because I know I suck at it. I am not fond of other people touching my things or, more important, moving them. I like them where they are—where I left them in the first place. I don’t let people know my exact boundaries, so they think they can get away with anything. This situation ends up at some point with me yelling at them and telling them where they can stick themselves. So. Not good roommate material.

But here I am in a great social experiment. I am requesting to be a roommate. I am asking others to overlook my poor abilities to interact properly in society. I am asking for others to take me in, and what have I learned? I, of all people, can be a decent roommate. Surprise. My mother would be so proud of me. Putting me into preschool decades ago in order to socialize her unsociable daughter finally paid off. It took some thirty odd years, but here I am.

Inside, I question how someone who has spent most of their adult life independent of someone else occupying their personal space could achieve this sort of balance in an uneasy situation. Maybe things work now because I am at that point where you’re too old to care so much about all the little stuff. Who cares if someone eats one of my Fage® yogurts? It’s yogurt. I’ll live. Where was this little bit of bliss in college? Wait. What about before that?

How did my parents make it through my brother and I being in the same household? That is one social experiment for which they might never forgive us. Sorry for all the screaming, Mom. Sorry about our behavior on car trips, Dad. I’m amazed at how you survived with two highly competitive children. I’m amazed we survived. Of course, we were quite amiable when sent to our rooms. Once confined to our own, individual spaces, my brother and I got along. We were lifers outsmarting the warden, but we weren’t outsmarting anyone. We snuck into the hall that separated our rooms and played games. We yelled to each other through the air conditioning vents. We were safe in our own bubbles of the universe, and as long as we were there, we were well behaved.

Maybe that’s it. Maybe I have figured out how to carry that bubble with me—a little piece of a common peace that can live wherever I live. It’s a nice thought.