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I think we can all agree that social dynamics are a little weird at the moment, and I’m not just talking about extreme physical distancing.

Some of us are still working online, which means getting a full day in, five days a week. Others are lucky enough to be paid while chilling at home, and it’s important to remember that some are facing job insecurity that could cripple them financially.

(See here for a list of funds and relief measures for small businesses in South Africa)

If you’re still working full time, you’re probably exhausted at the end of the day, which means the constant video call requests from friends can get a little tiresome. Conversely, if you aren’t working, the boredom might inspire an increased need for virtual social interaction.

I’m not a particularly social creature at the best of times. I see friends once, maybe twice a month. I certainly don’t want to have to put on ‘outside clothes’ so that we can video chat four nights a week now that we’re locked down.

Eleanor Gordon-Smith, for The Guardian, seems to share some of these sentiments:

Specifically, I have one group of friends who have now decided that we will catch up for drinks and a video chat every Tuesday evening.

I don’t really know how this happened and feel like a total Grinch for saying this, but I don’t want to Skype them that often. We would never have caught up that regularly in pre-corona life. But there’s no excuse to get out of it, it’s not like you can say “I’m busy” – because what else is anyone doing at the moment?

I used to lecture for a living, and even though the sessions were only two hours long, I felt like I hadn’t slept for a week afterwards. According to psychologists, this is a natural response to being watched by multiple people, which apparently wrings out your adrenal system.

Zoom made this experience literal. Most of our days now are spent watching ourselves being watched, bent like a digital Narcissus over thumbnails of our own faces, learning just how painfully oxymoronic it is to try to appear unobserved. That self-consciousness is exhausting.

I miss the way that in a great class or conversation I would forget where I was and start to feel like a pair of eyes and a brain floating in space, losing track – in a way the web camera would never permit – of myself.

I think we’re all also experiencing a level of crisis fatigue at the moment, which adds to the exhaustion.

As for what you can do about it: now is a good time to be candid about having emotional needs, because almost everybody on the planet is going through some kind of suffering for the same reason. It will take an all-time historical low of imaginative effort from your loved ones to understand that you might need to take care of yourself.

“I love seeing you guys but I need a little me-time off screens tonight” is a sentence almost everyone can empathise with right now. Even the neediest mother can see the reasoning in “I love you but I need to read a book alone for a while now”.

Also, to be frank, we’re all leading very boring lives at the moment, so there isn’t that much to talk about. Spreading out interactions a little will keep things fresh.

Practice what you need to say out loud then go for it.

Zoom or Skype will still be there next time you want to log in.

[source:guardian]