Flying Solo

It's nice to have alone time, at least until you have enough of that alone time to start wondering "okay, maybe I've had enough alone time?"

All of us have spent our lives in different versions of being with and without people, be they friends, family, partners, or something else. And as one gets older, as those dynamics tend to become pretty familiar.

Safe. Predictable. Satisfying.

This week, Patrick's solo parenting while his wife is on a work trip, and it got him thinking about the way shifting into old ways of doing things—I'm single, baby!—don't always hold the same appeal as you get older.

Patrick: So Rob, my wife is away this week on a business trip. When I was younger, and especially so when I didn’t have kids, these kinds of moments were always a fun free-for-all. I’d shotgun television shows, burn through hours of video games, 100% slam a beer or two more than I should while out (or in), and absolutely and under no circumstances would I eat a salad. 

My wife would always joke “so, what did you eat today” and the answer was almost certainly buffalo wings. Such antics are more reigned in now, because I’m in singularly in charge of shuttling two children to daycare and/or school, packing lunches, pick up and drop off for evening activities, and then finally juggling making dinner for three people, trying to understand how 3rd grade math works, and doing whatever it takes to make sure both kids are asleep by 9pm. By the end, my friend, all I want is a beer and to try and not fall asleep on the couch.

Oh, and I basically eat a side salad with every lunch and dinner these days.

Instead, what these weeks have become about is spending time with media that I do not have time for while my wife is around. We get, at best, an hour-ish of time to watch a show every night, before it’s time for me to play some video games and she heads to bed. We push that window open a little bigger on Friday and Saturday nights, where we usually watch a movie. 

She is not, for example, a huge fan of watching exceptionally sad movies. You know, the kinds that people warn you about before watching? If it’s nominated for an Oscar, she’ll do it, but otherwise, those get stacked into a queue of movies I end up sneaking in when she’s away. This is how I will probably end up watching We Live in Time, the sad-sounding movie with Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield about deciding to have a kid even though she’s dying, this weekend.

But otherwise, our tastes are pretty in sync. With a few exceptions, we watch the same TV shows and watch the same movies because it means we get to spend more time together. I have a handful of shows (like, say, the terrific Invincible) I watch on my own because of work and she has her guilty pleasure shows (like, say, the apparently charming Nobody Wants This), but given our personal time constraints, finding overlap has huge benefits. It also means, however, I can’t watch shows I am deeply invested in (I’m looking at you, Pitt!!) until she returns.

Alas. There are other ways my life shifts, how my habits change, when my wife is gone for an extended period of time, but I’m curious what yours is like (or isn’t like) in the same situation.

Rob: I go through an arc. Day 1 and maybe into Day 2, it’s Rob Time, baby! Crank up the sound system, enjoy Ronin or The Game for the umpteenth time. Sorry, poodles, but dad’s going to be playing Total War in the living room tonight, or calling down strikes in Helldivers! Maybe in the evening, I’ll enjoy the coldest martini in history with a bowl of blood oranges on the side and watch Deadwood again. The world is my oyster!By Day 3, though, the novelty has worn off. The dogs are acting weird and sad, and evening video calls are not getting them back to their normal poodle-ish joys. I am probably already losing touch with normal schedules because now there’s less appeal in calling it a night rather than watching another episode of TV. So now I’m running on less sleep. There are things I want to watch but, like you alluded to, can’t really watch until MK is back. I have my hands completely full with the dogs and housework and so I’m more shut-in than usual. Outside of the people at the dog daycare and the people I record podcasts with, I’m not having conversations.

And let’s be real, the conversations you have with dog daycare folks are not like, super involving: “So her poop was good? Tilly was a little off her food this morning.”If the business trip is much longer than that, everything starts to go to seed a little bit. There’s not enough dishes to run the dishwasher, so naturally I just let things start piling up. I tell myself I should cook, feel unmotivated to cook just for myself, so eventually rummage in the fridge for something or make questionable delivery decisions.