I do feel out of touch. That is not the debate here.

Without much or any effort or attention, I easily find myself unconnected. Seeing so much of the world as on the other side of some glass wall. Or worse, a two-way mirror.

I am not totally isolated. There are other souls which I seem to know. Some I know I know. But not everyone. Often times, it seems as though I cannot grasp the mind of anyone at all. Or even a passing glance.

And culturally, doubly so. The popular world keeps shifting its façade and I am not keeping up. For example, I learned what a T.H.O.T. is this morning. Real classy acronym. But the cats that keep up with the lingo go on all the dates. Chivalry is decomposed and rotten.

And your boy, your humble narrator? Not so much.

But that helps beckon the first point. Is my lack of connectivity with the pulse of my generational and cultural goings-on a matter of choice, or is it something else?

It is, at least, partly by choice. I live alone. I am unmarried. And I retreat into caverns of both idle, sometimes pointless thought, and scattered studies of that which interests me. Including my own mind, though terrifying that place may often be. I tend to stay in when others go out. Or go out when others choose to stay. I enjoy the more than occasional antithesis and don’t often shy away from the devil’s advocacy. Even when I agree, it is never long before I’ll go off making some point of difference. Or diversion.

I am still trying to establish myself as an individual, and that will always make you different from everyone else. Even if everyone else is trying to do the same.

Though, maybe, this is part or whole beyond my control. That this is the fate started upon, so this be the fate to follow. The other dimensions have other stuff. Early death. Total mental breakdowns. Global domination. Or just a house in the country with a cobblestone driveway and a barn.

But no matter what might have been or what was almost to be, I am stuck as is. And ‘is’- is out of touch.

But the isolation is not eternal. Can’t be. Those atoms and such that make up a human self, (this currently typing self, or your current reading self, naming a few)- the atoms that make up anything we see is doomed to cease. There is a finite timeline of sticking together for all that microscopic and cosmic junk to currently see as stuck together. They all eventually disperse. Alter or grown. Or all fall back to some nice and vague oneness. Much like chivalry, we too, shall become worm food. Then the worms fed elsewhere, as well. A pattern follows. Perhaps indefinitely, but certainly unknown.

Maybe this sense of out of touch is a self-inflicted symptom. I have often, and as of late more frequently admitted such to myself. I isolated myself after a series of fast happening and heavy hitting life events and have since stood as steadfast to that which stayed together, while trying in quiet to piece back all that got broke. Some of it comes together quick. Others slower. And slower still. And some seem that they may not come at all. And might be I’ll never know. Or won’t know until it is too late, perhaps. Perhaps some things break and that’s just that.

It is difficult-

To try and find out why I’ve been so disconnected by thinking out loud some of my own mental confusion, disguised as a not-quite-self not-quite-help blog series.

It is also comically simple to see why this can never cure the ‘out-of-touch’.

And the set up for many sorts of self-inflicted mental woes shine equally as clear, though less funny.

There are times one should dabble, or even dive full into a hermit type of life. When we retreat into whatever version of yourself you happen to be stuck working with, we can find and reignite that which was thought gone. We can refine habits and weed out the toxic ones. And better yet, we find new depth. And new perspectives on who we are and what we do.

But those same steps can betray without much of a notice. Resentment, shame, fear, anxiety, depression, nostalgia and all sorts of other shit can bubble and spew from parts unidentified. And if you only have yourself with which to work, the deception becomes harder and harder to decipher. Talking to yourself becomes your constant favorite/worst conversation. Becomes your only conversation.

What I mean is-

You do not connect to the outside world by staying in a basement apartment for the rest of time. The outside world is everywhere else. And evidently, there are other people living there.

Who knew?

I think I’ll play more music for strangers in the near future. Maybe the distant one, too.