We’re All About to Get a Lot More Awkward
There’s a stage in a bear’s annual cycle known as “walking hibernation.” At winters’ end, they emerge from their dens… a little off. They’re lethargic. They’re not eating much. They take a while to re-learn how to bear.
We’re all bears now. When I think of the looming pandemic winter, I imagine us all entering our own social hibernation, hunkered in our dens, the cold rendering most socially distant outdoor hangs newly impossible. And when we emerge into warmer weather, Elemental’s Dana Smith points out, we’re all going to be, well, a little off.
“Social skills are like any other kind of ability in that they require practice.” Smith writes in the latest edition of her newsletter, Inside Your Head. “And by this point in the pandemic, starved of normal, everyday social interactions — running into an acquaintance on the street, sharing an elevator with a co-worker, or making small talk with a barista — most of us are pretty rusty.”
We’ve already gotten kind of awkward. But over the next few months, with even fewer chances to practice being social in person, we’re…
