Here I Sit

At work, bored out of my mind. I know I did the right thing by changing jobs here at work – my old job was horrible, I was stressed out all the time, my boss treated me like shit and I had absolutely zero chance for opportunity.

But so far, in my new position, I am working WAY below what I could be doing. My boss is so great – she is working hard to get me up to speed but she just can’t seem to give me enough work to keep me busy. It makes me nervous – are they eventually going to figure out they don’t need me? Or, ask me to lower my hours to less than I would want to work? Don’t get me wrong – if and when they did want to discuss lowering my hours, I would totally be up for it – I had been trying to get my old boss to lower my hours for the past two years. But we can only handle so much of a pay cut – I guess we will cross that bridge when we get to it.

When she is in meetings and I have a lot of questions, I spent most of my time surfing on the Internet, like I am doing now. I always tell her when I need work, always ask her right away when I have questions but she has a job to do too. I understand that. I also understand that is a very slow time of year for our group right now. Our busy season doesn’t ramp up until November 1st and then we will be hopping (so I hear) until sometime in February or March. I hate working 50 hours week but at this point, it would be nice to stretch my brain a little bit.

So, I try to fill my mind with other things – fun plans and events coming up, getting them on the calendar, looking ahead. That only takes up so much time and you can only plan out so far . . .so then my mind wanders to less fun things. To being lonely, to wishing I had more of a community of people around me. My work friends are all out at a 2 day conference in Chicago and some of them really don’t feel like friends anymore – since I have left the department, I can feel them trying to put some distance between us. I sent an E-mail out yesterday, asking about 7 or 8 of my closest friends to get together for a local art walk coming up the week after Labor Day and got only one response. . .just one. Everyone else couldn’t even take the time to write back, say they would get back with me, were busy ,kiss my ass, nothing. I know – it has only been one day but I know most of them check their E-mail on a daily basis which makes their silence just that much louder.

These days, I spend the majority of my time with Brian, my aunt, his mother and our friends, Andy and Chris. That is really about it. I have my girl’s night out once a month – that is something fun to look forward to and it has gotten better the past month or two, people actually showing up and not bailing out at the last minute. I go out to lunch a lot with work friends and my friend, Carol – I have plans almost every day for lunch but none of the people I go to lunch with ever want to do anything outside of work. Carol and I will do something maybe once every 3 months or so – like tonight, we are going out to dinner and then to a jewelry party at her sister’s house. That will be fun – except for the jewelry party – I am so over buying crap like that from people, but I want to be a good friend, she asked me to go with her, so I am going.

I am on the board of directors for a very neat local organization that has a ton of board members right around my age group but the founder and I tried to plan one social event, for the board and their spouses and everyone turned up their nose or bailed at the last minute. Too busy, not a good night, not a good time, too much going on . . .it is always the same story.

I don’t know . . .*sigh* . . .I am just bitching to be bitching at this point, I guess. I learned something very interesting from an OD pal – he made most of his current friends online through different interest groups. I am not sure I would even know where to start to find people with similar interests as mine online and that would actually live around here. I remember a year or two ago, I joined a child free online support group but couldn’t find anyone that lived within a 50 miles radius of my home town on there. It seems like the biggest hurdle to friends at this point for us, in the area of the country we live is #1 – we don’t have any children and #2 – we don’t attend church. Those are the 2 main ways everyone our age makes and keeps friends. And if you aren’t in one of those two categories, you are practically a leper.

So, what’s the answer? Should we have had kids just to actually have some friends? It seems so insane – we have so much to offer , other people have so much to offer others people other than their kids being the same age or going to the same church. What happens to individual interests, hobbies, jobs, politics, local community, current events, and philanthropy? Everyone I know has retreated into their own tiny world where nothing exists outside the 4 walls of their own home and they couldn’t possibly have room to let anyone in except their own little family. It isn’t just Lynne – it is a lot of people I know.

Is it too much work to make yourself available to other people? To try and take their interests and preferences into account rather than just your own? I am tired – I feel like I have been beating my head against the wall doing this over and over again, countless times for countless other people and so rarely getting it in return. So should I do the same thing they do? Just spend time with Brian and noone else? Never reach out to anyone else, include anyone else, show interest in anyone else?

I know – I need to meet new people, expand my orbit to a larger group but just as I have found that most companies no longer care about their employees, that most companies are bitches to work for – most people aren’t willing to let a new person into their inner sanctum. Or if they are out there, I sure as hell don’t know where to look for them.