don’t you let me lie here and die here

 A fellow diarist wrote about her current struggle with time management.  With working a full day and just being too tired to do much once she got home.  I can relate, but on a completely different note and one that makes it a stronger case for leaving Michigan sooner.

Like my friend, I’m single and live alone.  Which means that we are the only ones to doing the household chores.  Now I’ve had roommates and yes, more people is more mess.  But there are also more hands helping out.  Maybe there are twice as many dishes, but I don’t have to empty the trash and do the dishes.  For me, doing more of the same task is quicker and easier than doing nine-hundred different little tasks.  There’s also someone to pitch an extra hand in when one is feeling slightly sick or so ill they sleep on the bathroom floor.  At least there’s someone to bring you water and food.  I hate cooking when I’m not feeling well because every smell makes me nauseous.  I’ll eat cold. raw pasta over anything that might produce an aroma while cooking.  So even if you’re a working parent with three kids, there are extra hands to help out.

My advice to her (and myself) is to work on time management.  The weeks I know I’m super busy, I don’t plan on trying to do major laundry (sheets, towels, blankets).  I leave those off for a weekend when I’ve got more time – though not usually a ton more time.  Anyways, I’m horrible at it and I rarely leave extra time in the margains, like for eating or the spontaneous things that pop up.  But we struggle away.

I know that I can put up blinders and do nothing but work (lots of overtime and late nights), but that does not usually lead to a good place.  I end up spending my birthday alone or no where to go on Easter because I’ve done nothing but work and have absolutely no social life.  I can also do the opposite, ignore work completely (like I’m doing now) and spend all my time surfing the internet or shortening my work hours down or even going so far as to quit or get fired.  Of course, then I have no money and would be homeless again.  So that’s not okay either.  There has to be a balance.

There also has to be a balance with my friendships.  Megan and I could easily spend every day talking all day long.  Yes, eventually we still need space and some alone time but the ONLY thing I regret about her having kids and getting married is that we never had the chance to be roommates.  It would have been awesome.  I could talk to her every day on the phone if we both had that kind of time.  And even without that much time, we still talk A LOT for being in different time zones and so far apart.  I also spend a lot of time talking with Manny, but eventually too much Manny makes me annoyed with him again.  I have other friends I talk with – either by phone or by texting or on Facebook.  Most of them, I wish I could have more time to talk with them.

I also really enjoy WoW and a few of my friendships are connected through there.  I also recently switched guilds.  I got into a HUGE fight with the GM over something stupid that he blew out of proportion.  I was just really sick and tired of being treated like such crap – it wasn’t just that one instance – so I left.  (I was mad about it all, but now I’m over it.  Kind of like Mike.  Just never want to talk to them again.)  Found a new guild that I really like and enjoy much more.  I’m making friends on there.  Kelly and Sarah have started playing now too so there’s more incentive for me to play and spend time with them.  There are other friends I wish I could keep in better contact with but there’s just not that much time in the day.  I need my alone time too.  I like to read and watch my good shows and cuddle with my cat and organize things.  I also want more time to practice my oboe and make reeds and arrange music.

I’m not a crazy social butterfly, but I could easily fill my days with talking with friends and spending time with the few local friends I like to see and never work, eat, sleep or be alone ever again.  But they all have lives too and we don’t live in Fairy Hollow.  So there has to be balance.  Sometimes there have to be choices about what you do and what you give up.  And that’s on a broad scale but I’m trying to focus and talk about just friendships.

Take my birthday, for example.  I wanted to go through FB and read all my birthday wishes.  I wanted to open my birthday cards.  I wanted to talk to Manny and Heather and my parents.  I also wanted to have dinner with Sarah and David.  I wanted to have ice cream with Laura.  And I wanted to work a full day.  I ran out of time to be able to do everything, and I still ended up going to bed at three in the morning.  My birthday cards are still in a pile and I haven’t answered ANY of the Facebook wishes.  There just weren’t enough hours in the day.

Manny was somewhat miffed that we didn’t get to talk on my birthday.  We talked last night and he was better but I could tell initially he was still annoyed.  I was out with Laura.  There was that moment of choosing between spending face to face time with someone I love and care about or talking on the phone to someone I love and care about – both of whom I haven’t really talked with in a while!  I choose the face to face time.  But I could easily fill my day up on talking with friends on the phone who are too far to actually see, with sending cards and gifts and little "thinking of you" trinkets to those people I am too far to do things for.  Except then I’m left with no friends here and feeling stretched all over the country, which is how it feels already.  A little piece of my heart is in Arizona and Colorado and Indiana and Ohio and strewn all over NY and California and Washington and the capital and England…  The friends I hold dear are spread out.  And sometimes you can’t reach out and touch all of them at once.

I love Manny dearly but I sometimes think he doesn’t really understand that.  His world is stretched between the City and the Valley.  He has a few other friends sprinkled around but the majority of his heart is in New York within a 2 hour radius OR all of his ex-pat friends return home on a regular basis.  Brian goes back to NY for every other major holiday.  If he wasn’t married, he’d probably go home every holiday.  Manny has visited me once in Michigan and has never visited Brian in Chicago.  We always go to New York.

I’m just desperate to go home.  Not just to visit but to move home.  To be closer to the nucleus of my friends, my heart.  When I leave Michigan, there are really only a few people who I would want to come back and see again.  There are only a few people who will even notice me leaving too.

As much as Manny doesn’t understand, people around here don’t understand either.  The majority of the families all live within a three-hour drive of each other.  They think Detroit is nearly too far to drive on a Friday after work.  I’m planning on working a full week, leaving work on Friday at 5pm and going all the way to eastern OH if not all the way to NY.  We’re talking eight hours and I would only be half way home.

I’m looking forward to the drive and to it all, but going home for Christmas takes a lot more than a three hour car ride.  Even if I had decided to fly, it would have taken a full day and more money than just driving.  I don’t think Manny appreciates how far it is.  Its nearly the same distance as Savannah, GA.  But he never drove that distance alone.  With family, with friends or riding a bus (which in my mind, is worse than driving but for completely different reasons) but never driving alone.  Its FAR.

This entry has completely wandered around its original point.  The dangers of writing while I’m at work, I suppose.  My point is that we only have so much time in a day, so many days in a week, so many weeks in a month, so many months in a year and only so many years to live them.  So why am I living so far from so many that I care for so much again?  I keep forgetting.

Haven’t you seen me sleep walking?
‘Cause I’ve been holding your hand
Haven’t you noticed me drifting?
Oh, let me tell you, I am

Tell me it’s nothing
Try to convince me
That I’m not drowning
Oh let me tell you, I am

Please, please tell me you know
I’ve got to let you go
I can’t help falling
Out of love with you

Why am I feeling so guilty?
Why am I holding my breath?
Worry ’bout everyone but me
I just keep losing myself

Tell me it’s nothing
Try to convince me
That I’m not drowning
Oh let me tell you, I am

Please, please tell me you know
I’ve got to let you go
I can’t help falling
Out of love with you

Won’t you read my mind?
Don’t you let me lie here
And die here

Please, please tell me you know
I’ve got to let you go
I can’t help falling
Out of love with you

Haven’t you noticed?
I’m sleepwalking

Falling – The Civil Wars