Bachelorhood and the "Rona

​ “The ‘Rona” is a term Niya, a student in my Blogging class coined, so I have to credit her.  Life has gotten very strange in the last couple of weeks.  Everything’s been cancelled: races, concerts, sporting events.  Social distancing is being encouraged, which can make life difficult for those who need interaction.
 
That being said, as an introvert and a singleton, this social distancing is something for which I’ve prepared for, well, my whole life.  After a spring break spent with family, friends, and concerts, four days of teaching, “Rona Panic,” going to a workshop on building my author platform, doing Pilates class (my studio just announced a temporary closure), and hitting the gym, I started to develop a runny nose and a light cough (diagnosis: likely allergies).  Normally, it wouldn’t be an issue for me to keep living life.  But these aren’t “normal” times.
 
Our school’s gone “remote” for the next few weeks, which means we’re teaching, but through the Internet.  So I’m still working.  But I’ve decided to “self-isolate” because I don’t want my symptoms to infect anyone else. 
 
So I taught remotely.  My first Blackboard Collaborate Ultra session went well with my Blogging course, as they read observation exercises they wrote; I had taken my students to the campus Student Center to write about things they observed, and we shared them.  Otherwise, it was all about grading, lesson planning, writing, and communicating with students remotely.  This writer always takes the events around him/her and turns it into prose. 
 
After that, I had dinner and hooked up digitally with my friends Nicole and Maggie to catch a live stream of a Dropkick Murphy’s show.  Typically, this Irish punk band plays in Boston on St. Patrick’s Day, but for obvious reasons, they chose to do a virtual show.  The singer, Ken Casey, dedicated a couple of songs to folks “have someone annoying them in the house.”  I felt excluded for a second, but then I realized I can watch this show without interruption, and as I’ve always had the natural ability to enjoy my own company, I’m great at living alone.  I might get annoyed at a roommate or a significant other in my “zone.”  I just need my own space, or as Virgnia Woolf put it, “a room of one’s own!”  On the chat feed next to the video, a dude commented, “I’m trying to enjoy the show, but my wife keeps telling me about all these COVID closings.”  Yeah, I feel you.  At a show, I try to tune out the world.  It’s problems will be there when I get back.
  
On Facebook’s Community of Single People page, someone posted about reading something that said, “Married folks, check on your single friends.”  The way I see it, though, we singles are quite the resilient bunch.  Self-isolating comes pretty naturally to a lot of us.  Enjoying your own company is an essential skill no matter what your relationship status or your Meyers-Briggs type is; now, it’s even more important.