The halls are quiet and I am the only one around. Granted, I sit my office and work, I don't see a lot of folks, but there's a hubbub outside. People are around, there's an energy. Heaven help me if I started working at home, someone would find me hanging from a rafter in the attic.

However, this time of day the voices I hear are from the streaming of "All Things Considered"; if I speak to them, they will not respond. They don't care for my thoughts, they only wish to tell me theirs.

I know when I go home there will be our furbabies, alternately vying for our attention and pretending we don't exist, at least until you scoop one up and kiss their heads or purr into their fur while they squint their eyes and soften into your embrace. I know that my wife will come home and go through her evening ritual of walking in, making her way to the bathroom and then seeking out me or the cats to see how our day was. The loneliness will be gone.

Unfortunately, loneliness brings its friends with it during this part of the day. Sadness. Self-doubt. Moodiness. Loss. They don't necessarily leave when the loneliness leaves. There's negativity present from the ridiculousness of the daily grind and adding them only complicates matters.

It's a vicious cycle. I could break it easily enough: come in to work, go home on time. Spend time at home working on setting up my bookshelves, or reading a good book, or even getting my workstation in order. I should do that rather than be here at the office. Why don't I do it? I don't know. Habit, perhaps, or the fear that the loneliness will find me there, too.

Perhaps it's just that I don't remember what it feels like to feel any other way.

Regardless, with an uncanny, repetitive accuracy, I find myself in my own long, dark tea-time of the soul.

restlessmind