Vacuum

As a single mama, I'm starting to recognize the feeling of not only parenting, but living in a vacuum. There's so little outside interaction in a typical day for me that I begin to feel as though the outer world were not much more than a shadowy dream. It makes it hard to get up a lot of urgency about things like paying bills, accomplishing work, really anything that is not directly and immediately part of getting through the day. 

As I try to express this sensation it's sounding like depression, but that's not how I'm experiencing it. I mean - don't get me wrong, I have periods of depression, and a lot of it stems from my physical and psychological isolation, but that's not what I'm talking about here. It's a sense as I'm turning down the bed for nighttime or folding laundry that oh yeah, there's other stuff out there and I'm supposed to be engaged with it, but damn, what is it? And it doesn't really matter, does it?

I'm sure it's not an entirely unknown feeling to partnered parents of young children, but I'm also sure it's intensified by the lack of other people's face-to-face influence on my daily life.