That was then...

 

So, I was looking for something else in some dusty computer files but ran across one of my old, ubiquitous spreadsheets (see unreadable facsimile above). It is a record of the social activities (both dates and group events) that Coco and I initiated in Fall/Winter of 2005.

Over the course of a little over four months, we had some sort of activity about every eight days with an average participation of 8 individuals (ranging from just the two of us to twenty people on New Year's Eve). A total of 31 friends and acquaintances are represented in these activities, most attending between one and three events and six people attending five or more.

I look at this from 17 years ago and compare it to my experiences even in the last decade or so and I can feel the drastic difference. A number of factors have contributed to that, of course; a minor diaspora of the old Seattle gang, mostly in response to housing pressures; our own move to Bellingham seven years ago; the general effects of aging and changing job circumstances on social activities; and, of course, for the past three years or so the disruption caused by the pandemic (which I believe is leading to continued patterns of behavior, but that's another essay). In any event, outside of work, I am not sure I have socialized with 30 different individuals in the past five years...

I don't have a spreadsheet with the stats (shocking) but I am sure the same decline is true in my tabletop RPG experience. I can remember playing every week in the campaign John was DMing, DMing my own campaign, and participating in a campaign at the game store on Cap Hill, all at the same time. Now I have one Zoom/Roll 20 game that I can attend three times a month.

So it goes.

I'm not sure how I feel about this. When I shared with Coco the details of the spreadsheet, she said "No wonder I was a wreck and you were so happy!" It is true that the pandemic slowdown -- less socializing, working from home, etc. -- has actually played to some preferences of introverts like her, but I wonder if it it isn't time to swing the pendulum back a little bit, maybe not all the way to our "posse days" but somewhere closer to the middle.