Islands

Not that there is an absolute guage for such things as lonliness, but really is digitising our social behaviour making us more lonely? And/Or am I just at a naturally/inherrently lonely phase of my life? Or have I always been a loner and just not realised it until mow?

With 42 years on this planet I can undoubtedly rule out misanthropic tendancy. Rather I tend towards the gregarious side of existence. So whilst I still engage and find the context of all of my relationships engaging I cannot help feeling this overwhelming sense of solitude and displacement. There are obvious factos of my predicament that warrant such an emotion: temporary displacement from my kids (+1000 kilometres away for seven months) and permanent displacement from extended family and friends of youth and young adulthood. Not to mention, my wife wants a divorce.

These, above, are obvious reasons for feeling lonely and could, and have been, until recently, compartmentalised in mental construct of my existence. However recently those reasons along with a more existential realisation of my loneliness have spilled out of my emotional pot and I feel like most days just sobbing, but yet I do not.

To give rational more context, I am currently attending a course where I am near the eldest, if not such bar one other person, by a good 15 years on the rest of my "peers" in the course. The course is extensive and, like most academic coursework, it is best to bond to fellow classmates to achieve good success in the course. Unfortunately this is prooving difficult for me. My efforts, I feel, seem at odds with classmates, as if I am more of peculiarity than some to be relied upon. I do not feel like a learned older brother but as an oddball. Coupled too this are my own self-doubt that I have, and try to shake. Finaly. the notion that the friends of my childhood either no longer reach out to me or ignore my infrequent attempts to connect.

For all of those reasons I feel lonely. Facebook only reaffirms this loneliness as some wierd vanity-voyeur-athon that is perenial and never-ending. Thus I have abandoned checking Facebook.