There's been a minor outbreak in this household of people putting dishes away in the wrong places. I'm on it.

I default to a low-empathy state, because I'm a human being. My focus is generally on me and my stuff. I believe everyone should think like me, and if they don't I get confused. I'm pretty sure this is normal.

So I think this is a good thing, forced empathy. If you're gonna spend this much time together, you'll have to walk in each other's shoes at some point. Maybe literally if it's raining. I'm not sure where my shoes are at the moment, for example.

Yesterday, I decided to take action on this idea of aggressive socialization, literally scheduling video chats so I don't forget how to speak in complete sentences. I had this idea of setting up little two- to four-person visits – we talk for half an hour or so, wave, share some experiences. Just be people. There are enough contacts that I could have fun mixing and matching people in my life who also know each other (or should). It would be an experiment.

I've tried to arrange some of these before, 4-5 times since the lockdown started, but people haven't seemed interested or else were busy at the time. Yesterday I shared my idea about this being a healthy, proactive thing to do with a bunch of people, and tried to set up a chat.

I got bummed. It's hard to not see it as personal rejection. And thus we're back to empathy.

People do not have the same lives. It's easy to assume that everyone else is staring at the walls and counting the ants, and it's fortified by age. A lot of my contemporaries are beginning to retire, and have time. A lot aren't, of course, and are still fighting the fight.

And I know, it seems, a disproportionate amount of teachers. I live with one, so I'm aware of the extra work required in order to teach from home, not offset (but nice anyway) by being able to do it in comfy clothes and having a mute button.

So I've decided to back off a bit, keep myself from getting hurt feelings, and also learn to give the rest of the world a break. I still think it's a good idea. Somebody let me know when and where, and I'll gladly turn on my camera.

And the steak knives go in the other drawer. FYI.

...

I've managed to break out of my lack of focus thing and actually watch some stuff, so that's a good sign. There's plenty to do here, and I haven't had a week without lots of jobs since this began, but it's good to have distractions.

So after making it through two virus movies, yesterday I turned my attention back to the second season of After Life, Ricky Gervais' Netflix limited series about a widower struggling through grief and the ordinary bleakness of his life without love. I enjoyed the first season, although it's a quick trip – eight short episodes, about a four-hour movie.

No one plays the misanthrope as well as Gervais; he's mastered the character, and in this role he's been given the gift of a good excuse. He was an ordinary bloke who stumbled into extraordinary love, which he documented by being a relentless videographer of little moments.

Now he lies in bed or sits on the sofa at night, sipping whisky and watching these on a laptop, watching his wife laugh or play with the dog, or speak to him in a personal message recorded shortly before she passed away from cancer. He shows up enough in these videos to give us a glimpse of what he was before, which appears to be happy.

Happiness is far away now. He works for the village community newspaper, a collection of misfit toys, and his disdain for everyone else is constantly being countered by his obvious affection for them. He wants to wallow in this character, sarcastic and indifferent, but Gervais does a marvelous job at showing us that this is just grief. This is how he makes it through the day without swallowing sleeping pills. He takes care of his dog. He visits his dementia-addled father in the memory care center.

He befriends a local prossie (streetwalker, sex worker), or she befriends him. He shares a bench at the cemetery with a slightly older woman, also mourning her mate. There's nothing particularly antisocial about him, even, except that he's so sad.

It's a good show. It's very funny, and quirky, with plenty of local color (and lots of new slang to marvel over, most of it vulgar). If you have little taste for diving into the peculiar habits of broken people (some of them are pretty peculiar, occasionally disgusting and in some cases I suspect illegal), skip this. It's a very sweet show, moving and often delightful, but...hmm. What's the right word? Maybe earthy. It's a little raw, let's say. Take that under consideration.

It was fun for me, anyway, easy to consume and then let slide away. I'm thinking now I can move on to something more mature, maybe revisit some films I haven't seen in decades, maybe catch newer ones I never got around to (I keep hearing about Titanic; was that good?).

Or maybe I'll just continue doing this, taking care of church business, thinking of new ways for us to be together when we really can't, learning to see life through others' eyes. Being a little less self-centered, maybe, and not minding so much that my coffee cup does NOT GO THERE, because it's just a coffee cup and we're all doing the best we can.