Do you ever have one of those weeks when everyone seems to have disappeared on you? I am having such a week, Gentle Reader. I often am on Skype with four different people who live in Peru, in Argentina, Honduras and Spain. We have all met on the Conversation Exchange Page and we help one another learn and improve Spanish in my case (already fluent but room to improve) and in their case English. I have a friend from Venezuela with whom I have had to cancel our last two coffee visits because of blips in my scheduling. My friend from Peru and my friends from Mexico are either busy or missing in action. My English speaking friends and I almost never see one another oftener than once a month and one of them is out of the country till Spring.
I am not feeling sorry for myself. I know that people have lives, that sometimes they are not feeling well or suddenly busy and overwhelmed with professional, social and familial obligations. I also am well aware that I am needing extra time to cultivate and deepen a life of contemplative prayer. As much as it is difficult at times to not feel abandoned I have chosen to embrace this moment as an opportunity to deepen and enrich my spiritual life. Even though I am feeling a bit empty I am feeling also relieved. I can breathe freely again.
In this regard other people are often a mixed blessing to me. When I took the Briggs-Meyer personality test I registered as being fifty per cent extrovert and fifty per cent introvert. Exactly. No wonder I'm never happy insomuch as other people are concerned. Spending a few days away from friends I feel lonely and isolated and, if prone to self-pity at the time, unwanted and rejected. When I am occupying a lot of my hours with others I am generally happy and bristling with energy. But I also get tired because I am always giving energy to others. It is like being a happy victim to many charming and lovely vampires.
Now I am feeling relieved if a bit lonely. I look forward to seeing my friends again but I am also luxuriating in all this lovely solitude as I rest and restore and replenish my energy again. In the meantime I continue to practice Spanish even without available conversation partners. I have an invisible friend, named Fulano (Spanish for Joe Blow or What's-It's-face). When I am walking outside I dial up my voicemail service on my phone and engage in long-winded conversations in Spanish with Fulano. Then I play back the monologue, listening carefully to my pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary before chatting with Fulano yet some more. Non-Spanish speakers who hear me likely assume that I am Spanish or Latin American. Spanish speakers will think that I am a foreigner who has a decent command of their beloved Castellano.
This isn't exactly the same as having a conversation in Spanish with a real person, but it is going to have to do for now. And it is being observed by others that Fulano is a very able teacher.
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