The phrase “social isolation” gives the wrong impression. We should keep the social, while maintaining a physical distance.
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Alright, it looks like last week’s Hail Mary didn’t quite work and we’re all still stuck at home doing the social isolation thing.
That’s an interesting term that they picked isn’t it, social isolation? I think it’s a bit of a fucked up term because it sort of implies that we have to just stay away from everyone, and have zero interactions with anyone else.
But that’s totally not the case. As a matter of fact, I’d like to encourage people to not only talk with others, but also reach out to friends, family, neighbors, or whatever. Initiate the conversation. Now, I’m not suggesting that you all go down to the bar for happy hour or anything. You probably can’t anyway because it’s closed. But there are a number of ways you can communicate with other people while still maintaining the physical distance or barriers.
I think this is important especially for people who might live alone, or for those who get the majority of their social interaction in person outside of their home. Even more importantly, is when there are people who are struggling with finding their sense of purpose while their job might be on hold, or some volunteer work they do is put off for the foreseeable future. If that sounds like you, I know it’s really important to maintain that sense of purpose. And if you’re struggling to figure out what your purpose is these days, maybe you could be the one who checks in on the folks in your life.
So how do we do this?
OK, first off I realize that not everyone out there is a tech geek like me, so not only will I introduce a few tools you can use, but I’ll also walk you through how to use them as best as I can.
Facebook is a pretty common platform that a lot of people are already on and familiar with. I’ll start here because it’s a pretty low barrier to entry. If you don’t have a Facebook account, it’s 2020, just sign up for one. It kills me when I hear people, especially vets, say “oh I don’t want Facebook to take all of my information, I value my privacy too much.” It’s like, you were in the military, all your shit’s out there anyway. You had no privacy in the military, just sign up for the damn account. You can delete it after all this crap blows over if you want.
Alright, so how do we keep in touch on Facebook? Of course, you could post updates to your timeline, or stories or whatever, but that isn’t a real connection. But they do have a pretty useful feature where you can video chat with your friends. If you click the little messenger icon – it looks like a speech bubble with a lightning bolt in it, you can click a friend’s name or search for a friend you haven’t chatted with before. In their message window, there’s a video camera looking icon. Click that and you can start a video chat with...
