Optionality

• Current Location: Milwaukee, WI

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I’ve been stuck inside for days.

First a heat wave rolled through, blasting the area with 100-degree-plus temperatures and skin-glazing humidity levels that made leaving an air conditioned space inadvisable. Then a continent-belting plume of wildfire smoke flowed down from Canada, darkening skies, reducing visibility to a dozen feet, and clogging pores, tear ducts, and airways with clouds of microscopic particulates.

I generally like spending time alone, at home, cozy and capable of fully investing myself in whatever catches my attention. I can focus on my work, read a book, or make a meal, all without worrying over external variables and schedules.

Back when I was persistently perambulating, traveling full-time and bopping around from couch to hostel to temporary rented apartment, I craved this sort of solitude. I seldom had privacy, my own space, the opportunity to just be in my own head for extended durations. I was either living in cluttered, people-occupied environments, or was in my own space, but it was filled with other people’s stuff (and I still relied on other people to understand what was happening around me much of the time). For a decade, the basics of life were inextricably tied to my being-around-people.

The kind of privacy and control over my space that I craved back then is a lot less satisfying when it’s forced upon you.

As many of us discovered during the height of the pandemic, it’s one thing to choose to be alone, and another entirely to be forced by circumstance into a little box you can’t safely escape. A retreat begins to feel like a prison when there’s no way out.

The opposite is also often true, of course. I love being around people, chatting and learning and enjoying shared experiences. But when I had no choice but to be around people all day, every day, it sometimes weighed on me, wore me down. Choosing to socialize is different from having no other option, just as choosing to be alone is distinct from forced isolation.

The choices we have or don’t have shape our perception of our daily specifics, and our degree of optionality directly influences how we feel about our lives.

I think this is both interesting and potentially useful, as it suggests that some of the things we currently experience as confining could, under other circumstances, feel liberating, and vice versa. And the main thing standing between us and that perceptual shift is feeling like we have a choice in the matter.

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I’ve been home-bound for much of the past week. The combination of another brutal heatwave, paired with record-settingly dangerous air (due to wildfire smoke plumes drifting down from Canada) left me stuck at home, suffering from a not-great respiratory situation, and periodically broiling because my bedroom AC setup doesn’t keep the bad air out. That forced me to choose between flayed lungs and an 85-degree (F) average bedtime temperature (I chose the latter, FML).

Fingers-crossed next week sucks a little less, weather- and climate-wise!

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