alone time

Thursday night was my first "alone time" since...well, forever. Although it was spent working out, more working out, cleaning the entire house, and cooking dinner and baking dessert at the same time, it was nice to have the place to myself, and hanging out with myself. Sometimes I just need a breather, a pause in life.

I love spending time with my husband. I also love hanging out with friends. When I'm not doing one, I'm doing the other. But I never allow myself me time. It sounds crazy, I know. But for the past two years, I can't recollect how many times I've had me time; all I can tell you is that it's less than the amount of fingers I have on both hands. Sigh.

I kinda blame it on college. When I wanted to hang out with friends, I just walked on over to their room, or spend the day at the beach, or just hanging out for hours at night. When Brian & I were dating, we would eat dinner together, go to the malls, or even go on random adventures. In an odd way, I developed a somewhat "healthy" balance with all that. With school work, couple of job, and the many extracurricular activities I was involved, I was on the go. Sometimes I look back on those four years and think, "How in the world did I survive all that?" But if I wanted alone time, I found time to do it. I just had to force it. Sometimes I didn't show up for a class or two, or even cancelled on several hang out times.

Now that I'm married and  have a full-time job (that often times require overtime or bringing the work home during my weekends, oi), my life is a little bit different. My days usually start at 615/630 in the morning at ends at 1030 at night (sometimes 9/930 depending on how work went). My husband is my priority in life. I need eight hours of sleep to endure eight or more hours of staring at my computer the next day. Hanging out with friends is reduced to once a week for a couple of hours (and that's with just one of several groups of friends I'm balancing). I meet with my wonderful life group once a week. That's just M-F. Weekends can vary with family shindigs, Saturday morning soccer games, celebrations, church, or one or two coffee dates. Life is little bit different in the "adult world."

Busy. Busy. Busy. 

The problem is, I don't like spending time alone, ironically. It's my fault really. I would rather busy it up with friends or stay at home with my husband all night. If I know I'll be alone at home or feel the need to do something instead of resting, I'll fill that time. There are many reasons why: need for people, people-pleaser, antsy, think that someone might break into my home (valid reason), don't like being alone with my thoughts, need to fill time with things. But being alone that Thursday night, even though I once again busied it with minute tasks, made me wonder how often I need to have time to myself. To pause. To breathe. To regain energy for the next day.

New goal for 2012: more alone time.