OK for interviews
I’m now full up for the first phase of interviews. You know what that means? It means you guys ROCK! I’m going to be conducting running interviews over the course of the next several months, so please keep your eye on this blog, as there will be plenty of chances for “jumping in” on different subjects. The book is weaving and winding and slowly taking shape. Feedback helps, so many thanks.
Seeking phone interviews
Greetings!
I am rapidly changing direction when it comes to feedback. Online feedback works really well for some books (Gretchen Rubin’s *The Happiness Project* uses online feedback exclusively), but it’s not working for me. I find I get curious about people’s posts, and I want to follow up, and I’d really, in the final analysis, just rather be having a conversation.
So I’m now seeking interviewees for a series of questions about place, loneliness, and belonging. The questions will range from home, to neighbourhood, to city, and will examine what these places mean to you. How do you create a sense of home when living alone? Do you feel embedded in your neighbourhood? Does your city feel cold to you? Do you fantasize about moving to the country? Or have you moved to the country only to find yourself cut off and alone?
The questions will be wide-ranging. We can talk about what’s most important to you.
Remember: I change all identifying details, so no one will know it’s you. This has worked in the past and it’s an approach I’m comfortable with.
I can call or Skype you anywhere in the world. If you’re interested in participating, please just send me a note. And, two quick follow up points: If you’ve already sent me comments by email, but are in the mood for a talk, we can just pick up where your comments left off. Also, if you have emailed me in the past to say that you’d be happy to participate in future research, please note that I’m not ignoring you! It’s just hard of me to keep track of individual comments. I *do* want to hear from you!
Confidentiality assured
One more quick note: Rest assured that any comments sent to me will be kept entirely confidential. It’s the stories that matter…your identity will be protected.
Place — take two
OK, so I think the last post might have been a bit vague. Let me try again.
I’m interested in how people use place as a response to loneliness (or how you see place as a contributor to feelings of isolation). How, in other words, does place help or hinder feelings of loneliness? Are you attached to a specific place? Does your neighbourhood feel cold and unfriendly? Is your home your refuge, or do you find that living alone (and being alone in the home) makes loneliness much worse?
Basically, I’m opening things up. Hopefully this approach is more workable. I’m learning that posting Qs online is very different from a long, person-t0-person interview. So please be patient — I’ve got to get the hang of this new approach!
Again, think place. Where do you find a sense of belonging? Have you lost a comforting place? Found one?
I could keep going with these questions, but will leave it at that for now. Post to the blog or write to me at moc.koobehtylenolnull@ylime.
I want to hear about…home
Dear Peeps,
I’m working on my next book, and am wondering if anyone is interested in sharing their thoughts on home.
My thinking is this: It seems to me that a good deal of my experience with loneliness has intersected with place. Loneliness has made it hard for me to feel at ease in my city, comfortable in my neighbourhood, and settled within my apartment. It seems as though there’s always something “off.” In relation to home especially, I’ve found it hard to create a sense of home on my own. I’m constantly struggling with the notion that home is something other people have, something that’s not necessarily mine for the taking.
I’m wondering about the following things (here come the little flowers!):
- Have you had trouble creating a sense of home?
- Does your place feel curiously uncomfortable even if you have the money to decorate?
- Is a sense of home something that comes and goes between houses / apartments?
- Have you lost a home? How has that experience affected you?
- Do you find it hard to create a sense of home on your own?
- Alternatively: Is a sense of home something you take comfort in when confronting loneliness and/or isolation? What do you credit this sense of home to? A high income? A lovely house? A natural knack for homemaking?
Note that you don’t have to link loneliness and home directly. I’m looking for subtle relationships, and am interested in all sorts of ways that lonely people might interact with home.
There are three ways to participate:
- Post a comment to the blog — this is something everyone will see.
- Send a note to moc.koobehtylenolnull@ylime.
- Send me an email saying that you’d rather talk.
Hope to hear from you soon!
Catching up
Peeps!
My apologies. I’ve been out of touch for weeks. First, there was the maddening illness, and then (more significantly) came revisions to a book proposal I was working on. Book proposals are strange creatures: you have to imagine an entire book which is not yet written, and then convince an editor that this not-yet-written book is worth her time.
Happy news! Editor liked the not-yet-written idea. This means that my next book is sold, and will be published at the beginning of 2014. (Note: this is for Canada only. US and UK rights have to be sold separately.) The book is really a follow up to Lonely. It will look at what we can do in *response* to loneliness. This is something that I didn’t spend much time on when writing Lonely. This was for two main reasons: 1. There wasn’t a lot of work available on the subject, and 2. My interests were really elsewhere. But now that Lonely is behind me, I feel like I have some unfinished business. I need to know what a person can do, on their own, to answer the loneliness in his or her life.
For this, I’m going to need volunteers. With Lonely, I worked with a core group of about 20 people, but I think my approach this time around will be more diffuse. I want to talk to various people about various things. So please keep your eye on this website. Some topics might interest you quite a lot, and you might feel like sharing your thoughts. I’ll be posting calls for volunteers on this page, and also on my seriously defunct Twitter stream.
Thanks for the notes and messages about my health. I’m all better now, and am looking forward to connecting with some of you in the months to come.
E.
A cold and flu post
I know that people read this blog from all over, and that in some places (like sunny Australia) it is not cold and flu season, but here in Canada, it certainly is. I caught a bug a week ago and now have a pack-a-day hack and the energy of an omelette. Not to worry! I know that the worst will soon be over, and I’m grateful that I generally have excellent health.
But my week-plus of illness has been interesting from an almost sociological perspective. I live alone, and the cold (both the illness itself and the fact that it seems pretty contagious) has meant that I’ve had to cancel *all* social ties. I’ve basically spent the past week saying, “Four days since social contact. Five days since social contact,” and so on. I’ve also become more than usually self-sufficient. Family members have offered to bring me groceries, but the grocery store is only a block away, and I’ve been able to walk there, so I’ve told people I can get by on my own.
And I have been able to get by, but the solitude has got me thinking. There is so much written these days about the wonders of living alone, and some of this writing is (a) really good, and (b) long overdue. But weeks like this one make me realize how tough living alone can actually be. There hasn’t been anyone to bring me tea. No one to entertain me with tales of the wider world after I’ve spent the day in bed. No one to ration out cough drops when I’m on the verge of coughing up a lung. Instead, I’ve been relying on virtual company — on my email accounts, and (somewhat obsessively) on news articles online.
I’m not saying that there aren’t good things to living alone. Clearly, many people enjoy the peace and solitude such a situation can offer. But we have to recognize that not all people have chosen aloneness (I, for one, was basically kicked into it this past spring) and that living alone can be, at times, exceptionally difficult. This past week has felt like a solitary confinement experiment, and I haven’t enjoyed it. I’ve got things to do this coming week — meditation class, dinner with a friend — and I find myself hungry for companionship.
So this post is really going out to a select few: those who live alone, and who find themselves sick this winter. It’s lousy. (And a week spent alone can really remind you of lots of other periods of unchosen aloneness.) If you find yourself sick and on your own this winter, drink plenty of fluids, stay warm, and be really, really good to yourself. It will pass.
Loneliness and emotional sensitivity
Wasn’t sure what to call this post. What I’m trying to get at is this: I’ll see a headline in the NY Times about something like US combat dogs being abandoned in Iraq, and I won’t be able to read it. I mean I am viscerally unable to open the link. The same goes for stories about shark hunting (shark populations are collapsing), drowning polar bears (thank global warming), and leopards being kept in tiny enclosures as pets.
Is this just me? I think not. I think that loneliness, especially if it’s experienced on a long-term basis, really does sensitize you to suffering. And it involves this terrible vulnerability — you feel too much alone, too unguarded. And I think that sense of vulnerability leaves you uniquely attuned to people and creatures who’s vulnerability is being exploited & who can’t fend for themselves. This could mean street kids, or women involved in the sex trade, or whole families starving in Africa.
Do other people find this to be true? Do stories of pain feel like they’re aimed right at you? And is it one “domain” or many? In my case, I find I can’t read or watch animals-in-distress stories. The thought of watching a documentary like “The Cove” (about the dolphin slaughter) makes me hyperventilate. But I have read long stories about the sex trade and I find that, while they are disturbing, I can tolerate them.
What interests me about this “can’t look” phenomenon is that I think it provides me with a clue about how to start responding to my feelings of disconnection. Put simply, I have to start looking. I ripped a story out of a magazine last week about shark drownings, and it’s been sitting on my kitchen table ever since. I’ve now piled other things on top of it, but can see the photo (a man casting a net) peeking out from under a book. I intend to *read* this story. This may seem like a silly goal. Like, just read the story already! For others this may be a simple thing to do. For me, it isn’t.
I plan to study my reactions as I force myself to read things I normally avoid. (And it is mostly reading, since I no longer have a TV.) Perhaps the act of reading and learning won’t be as bruising as I expect it to be. Or maybe it will be. Either way, I’m going to start turning to the things I’m now studiously avoiding, all in the hopes that this act of what is essentially caring might make me feel more connected.
More on loneliness and volunteering
Thanks to everyone who commented on my last post, which was about responding to loneliness through “reaching out.” I still stand by what I say, but I do realize that I have (in a small way) contradicted myself, since in an earlier post I warned about the dangers of seeing volunteering as a solution to loneliness.
Let me elaborate. Here’s what I think *doesn’t* work. In just about any city, you can find a volunteer centre, and that centre will ask you about your general interests and then match you with a suitable organization. I have some experience with this form of mix-and-match volunteering, and in my experience it is pretty much a ticket to nowhere. If you’re lonely, you need a sense of connection, and it’s hard to feel connected to a non-profit or seniors’ centre that you have no real relationship with.
Here’s the sort of volunteering that has worked for me. In Newfoundland, there was a dog pound that was remarkably lackadaisical. You could show up any weekday between 12 and 4, walk as many dogs as you wanted, and could stay out for as long as you felt like. If you didn’t show up, it was no big deal–someone else would be there to take the dogs out. There were people around (other volunteers, the receptionists at the front desk) but it was not overly social. Most of my time was spent walking around a nearby lake, and doling out pats and praise.
I liked this volunteer opportunity because:
- it let me engage with something I deeply relate to and care about (ie., vulnerability and animals)
- it brought me into contact with like-minded others, but was not primarily social in its aims
- if I was feeling withdrawn, or having a bad day, I could skip it without throwing off anyone’s routine.
Now, I’m not saying that this situation was best for the dogs. In Toronto, where the pound is way more organized, you have to commit to a certain day & time, you have no choice in the dogs that you walk (problematic if you’re scared of certain breeds), and you don’t keep the dogs out for very long.
Probably the more structured Toronto approach is better for the canines (ie., all dogs get walked, there’s no favouritism, etc.) but that’s not my point. My point is that the mix of casualness, meaning, exercise and limited social contact was just right for my loneliness. And such volunteer gigs are hard to find.
So what I’m really saying, in what is turning into a long post, is that certain *types* of volunteer work are probably a good way to “reach out.” Not all types. Certainly not something you’ve just picked at random or been assigned to.
More on this to follow. Am still doing a lot of thinking re volunteering and reaching out. Just thought I would add some qualifying comments.
And, can I just say: It is January 7th and about 10 degrees celsius outside. This is totally weird. More on *this* to follow as well.