This is a line that my father-in-law uses that I love. It is only used in the past tense, and it’s used to explain the unintentional detaching for some inner reflection time. It’s probably the best excuse you can have for those moments in a conversation when the other conversers realize that you’re no longer participating. You’re not on your phone. You weren’t distracted by some other external stimulus. You had just “Gone Within.”
Today on my quick out-and-back to May Valley, I was a good 20 minutes into the valley before I realized it. The urban beginning to this route had me in commuter mode. The suburban phase that followed had me more relaxed, but my mind clearly went elsewhere.
When I snapped out of it, I couldn’t even tell you what I had been thinking about. It took a couple of hours later to remember. I was running through all the change in the last week. All good change. But tiring in aggregate, if that makes any sense.
Changes at home: Drew getting a summer research job; Luke nearly all caught up on his summer course after a couple of health setbacks. Changes at work: got a new employee; finalized some org decisions with leadership. Changes around us: all the high school graduates among our friends group.
For the record, not this kind of “gone within”:
“And after that I just sorta space out for about an hour”