I came to this piece from another of your essays and immediately pulled it up. You are not alone in this by any means. I was laid off 10 years ago and went the freelance route, facing many of the struggles you describe. In 2023 I hit a wall. Here’s an essay I wrote and published the week before yours came out: https://open.substack.com/pub/glenncook/p/stuck-in-time?r=727x&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Thank you for writing this. It’s an important message that impacts more people than you know. And it is very well done.
Great photo at Ozone's, BTW. Also, I might add, GREAT HAIR. I'm jelly. Keep up the good work, Matt. You are a real talent and have skills that you share with the world.
This piece resonated with me, and probably a lot of other writers & performers here at Substack. I have found the need to back off of my work here in order to be able to rest, accomodating the needs of an aging body & mind, and to be able to spend any quality time with my wife and friends. Many of my friends have fallen out of touch, and I decided last autumn to try re-establishing contact with a couple of those to whom I was fairly close.
Loneliness and depression are real. As a longtime introvert I thought I would do fine with the mental stimulation of writing about music I love and getting the chance to listen and read about the stuff I was interested in. But it's not enough. Reading your piece helped me realize that there are others with very similar concerns and that talking about it helps.
I find this true in my life as well. As my friends had children everyone began turning inward and over time most folks moved to different areas. At a certain point I had my closest friends move back to MI as their parents were aging and they wanted their children to have as much time as possible with Grandparents. Now at 50 I am grappling with a sense of solitude that can be overwhelming even though I have plenty of mental engagement with work and with my many artistic pursuits. But I have always been a bit of a hermit and didn’t realize how much I relied on friends to pull me out of my brain and into an engaged life. I think it is the time of life we are in. I am often reflecting on the life I have lived and trying to contextualize it all. And I am looking forward with disbelief that I am closer to the end of life than to the beginning. But I am also trying to find presence in the moment and not get too deep into the muck. That can be a challenge as my greatest strength and greatest weakness is my tendency to deep introspection and thinking thinking thinking. Sometimes I just want to be a cat. They figured this shit out right off the bat.
To be a cat; aloof, content, entitled and resilient.
This is all resonating deeply with me as you share it. It has never been easier to hermit than it is right now. It's easy to hermit and think you're engaging when you haven't left the house in days.
I came to this piece from another of your essays and immediately pulled it up. You are not alone in this by any means. I was laid off 10 years ago and went the freelance route, facing many of the struggles you describe. In 2023 I hit a wall. Here’s an essay I wrote and published the week before yours came out: https://open.substack.com/pub/glenncook/p/stuck-in-time?r=727x&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Thank you for writing this. It’s an important message that impacts more people than you know. And it is very well done.
Thank you so very much, Glenn. Your piece is terrific. Thanks for sharing.
Great photo at Ozone's, BTW. Also, I might add, GREAT HAIR. I'm jelly. Keep up the good work, Matt. You are a real talent and have skills that you share with the world.
Thanks so much, brother.
I am grateful for the hair every damned day.
This piece resonated with me, and probably a lot of other writers & performers here at Substack. I have found the need to back off of my work here in order to be able to rest, accomodating the needs of an aging body & mind, and to be able to spend any quality time with my wife and friends. Many of my friends have fallen out of touch, and I decided last autumn to try re-establishing contact with a couple of those to whom I was fairly close.
Loneliness and depression are real. As a longtime introvert I thought I would do fine with the mental stimulation of writing about music I love and getting the chance to listen and read about the stuff I was interested in. But it's not enough. Reading your piece helped me realize that there are others with very similar concerns and that talking about it helps.
Thanks so much for sharing, Marshall. Loneliness is real and persistent. I hope you can find a way back. Best of luck, my friend.
I find this true in my life as well. As my friends had children everyone began turning inward and over time most folks moved to different areas. At a certain point I had my closest friends move back to MI as their parents were aging and they wanted their children to have as much time as possible with Grandparents. Now at 50 I am grappling with a sense of solitude that can be overwhelming even though I have plenty of mental engagement with work and with my many artistic pursuits. But I have always been a bit of a hermit and didn’t realize how much I relied on friends to pull me out of my brain and into an engaged life. I think it is the time of life we are in. I am often reflecting on the life I have lived and trying to contextualize it all. And I am looking forward with disbelief that I am closer to the end of life than to the beginning. But I am also trying to find presence in the moment and not get too deep into the muck. That can be a challenge as my greatest strength and greatest weakness is my tendency to deep introspection and thinking thinking thinking. Sometimes I just want to be a cat. They figured this shit out right off the bat.
To be a cat; aloof, content, entitled and resilient.
This is all resonating deeply with me as you share it. It has never been easier to hermit than it is right now. It's easy to hermit and think you're engaging when you haven't left the house in days.