Since switching to full-time remote work, most of my time is spent at home. My schedule includes a moderate number of meetings, but my employer doesn’t require that everyone be on camera all the time, so I’m certainly not getting up every morning and putting on a suit and tie. The closest thing I have to formal work attire is a solid-color Costco polo shirt and a pair of jeans with a pair of white cotton athletic socks in place of shoes.

A few months back, though, I realized that I should really go to the effort of wearing shoes more often. One reason is that I have some very cool sneakers — rainbow-hued Chuck Taylors, for example — that deserve to get more use. But in truth, the house is so quiet when I’m working* that the sound of my big feet clomping down the wooden stairs to the kitchen annoys me.

The main reason for wearing shoes more often is a growing awareness of my need to protect my feet from injury. I am a diabetic, after all, and even if it is so well-controlled that I barely warrant a pre-diabetic label most of the time, I know what can happen to the extremities of diabetics. You end up getting an unnoticed splinter in your heel, an infection creeps in, and suddenly you’re eight inches shorter on one side. Neuropathy’s a bitch, man.

This past autumn, then, when I was asked about what I wanted for Christmas, I asked for slippers. Fuzzy slippers. Fuzzy slippers with rubber soles so I won’t slip on the stairs, and fuzzy so my feet don’t get cold when I’m sitting in front of a computer screen for hours at a stretch in a drafty old farmhouse in the midst of a bunch of cornfields.

Santa delivered. I have never felt as old as I did when I opened the gift and realized that I was genuinely elated on receiving a pair of fuzzy, blue, rubber-soled slippers. I wear them all the time — almost literally, since as I mentioned, I seldom leave the house.

But “seldom” isn’t “never,” and every couple of days I do walk the 150 yards or so from the house to the mailbox to see what manner of junk has arrived. I stroll briskly down the cracked and rotted old asphalt drive to the mailbox and back up to the house. If my work is finished for the day and the weather is nice, I might walk the mile-long side street past the neighboring farmhouses, and then just turn around and walk back again. (It’s an exciting life, isn’t it?) It’s a bit of exercise, anyway, and lets my eyes focus on something that isn’t digital for a change.

A couple of times I’ve run into neighbors and chatted with them. They’ve always been pleasant people in that inconsequential small-talk kind of way. One time I met the wife of one of the farmers — a young woman, maybe early thirties. She didn’t have the luxury of working from home since her job entailed handling billing paperwork for a mid-sized local medical practice. We spoke about jobs, and pets, and living in farm country. I enjoyed talking with her quite a bit, actually, even if she did give me the occasional raised eyebrow and half-smile.

It wasn’t until we parted ways that I understood. She’d just spent twenty minutes talking to an old, bald, white guy with a gash healing on the top of his head from a fall down the stairs, wearing a pair of faded black jeans, a logo-ed corporate jacket open to show a t-shirt covered in weird mystical symbols. And oh yeah — a pair of fuzzy blue slippers.

Yep. She was wondering which psychiatric facility I’d snuck away from.

There’s an unexpected bucket list item checked off: I’ve become the weird old guy living in the ancient farmhouse on the top of the hill — the one kids make up stories about.

*The irony of my preference for quiet while using an extremely click-y mechanical keyboard is not lost on me. I am a paradox; I contain multitudes. Sue me.