Social distancing is here to stay for much more than a few weeks. It will upend our way of life, in some ways forever.
It started as a joke, but I'm beginning to wonder if we're going to see some noticeable shift in the ratio of extroverts to introverts. I remember hearing once that there's a spike in violent crime about a week into a heat wave, and we're about to finish week 2 of significant social distancing in the U.S. I'll be very curious to see what changes in mental health we see over the next few weeks. I'm finding myself free of this weird pressure that I was previously unaware of. Our culture was driving me to question whether I was secretly interested in a more active social life, and whether I was secretly miserable because I didn't have one. My wife and I have been talking a lot about how little this has really affected our day-to-day, other than our daughter being home full-time now. But we're both doing the same jobs, I'm working from home every day instead of three days per week, but that's about it. I guess we're doing a tad more planning about when to go to the grocery store? We won't know a lot of effects for years to come. The economy may be different, also our government's role in our lives. All we can do is wait and see.