Coffee shops have become strange little waiting rooms. Everyone is technically together, but most people are doing their best impression of being somewhere else. Near the counter, a guy is waiting for his coffee when he notices a woman a few feet away. He looks at her; she eventually looks at him, and through the … Read more
I don’t know exactly when it happened, but one day I found myself standing in the self-checkout line at the grocery store, wondering when everything had gotten so quiet. The store wasn’t empty. It was busy enough that every register was occupied, and people were weaving shopping carts around one another like they always had. … Read more
For years, I’ve heard people talk about the loneliness epidemic as if it appeared out of nowhere. The more I thought about it, the less that explanation made sense. Then I started looking back at what happened during and after COVID. Whether intentional or not, COVID accelerated one of the largest social restructuring events in … Read more