... get off my back

Alright.

It has been a few weeks since I have written. To be fair, I haven't had all that much to say (and haven't felt like spending extra hours on the computer after 8+ at work). On the other hand the things that are on my mind aren't really blog material. Sometimes it is best to leave weighing topics right where they are. Some do have a very long shelf life... but others expire on their own with no energy required. I prefer the latter. Ugh... this sounds like a journal entry...

Dear Diary, 


I am one unsettled bizznatch lately. I am in love with my life yet somehow I want to tell everyone to kiss my ass. Please help me to stop hating people and craving privacy. 


 Yeah, that's not entirely true but I am realizing as of late that I really AM a private person. Sure, you are probably thinking  how does a private person write a blog where the basis is expressing thoughts and emotions? Well - I share just enough. Surface stuff. I don't know if anyone out there actually writes what lives deep within their soul. Except maybe Stephen King.


So this privacy thing - yeah, it has really blossomed over the past year or so. I always enjoyed alone time - writing, reading, walking, staring at the ocean, blah blah blah... but this new-found characteristic is a more mature version. And to be honest, I didn't give it much thought until this week.

I guess things got a bit out of control for me with the addition of social networking, text messaging and every other avenue for communication that's been thrown at us over the past decade. It has just become so frigging EASY to get in touch with everyone. You used to be able to say "Oh, I wasn't home when you called" and leave it at that. These days cell phone use has become so insanely acceptable that the only real excuse for not answering a call is if you are in a church. Let's put it this way - I have been in a church a handful of times over the past 5 years and I have purposely not answered about seventeen thousand and forty nine calls. I sometimes see the little envelope icon or the voice mail alert and shrug my shoulders. I do realize that there is a ridiculously tiny chance that something could be an emergency but then I think back to the twenty years before attaining my cell phone and realize an emergency is unlikely. I would bet my boots that it's a text explaining a friend's fury rather than alerting me that a meteor is heading towards my house. The truth is, sometimes I just want to shut my phone off for days, ban computer use and live unconnected for a little while. It has gotten to be too much.

When you ask me what my dream life would be - I respond with, "To live, wealthy as hell of course, in a big, Victorian, sea-side home - or newly renovated and just as big farm house - with Gregg on acres and acres of land with the closest neighbor miles away and a front porch looking out to a beautiful landscape rather than some gaudy front door decoration and oil stained driveway leading to a family that sucks". My point? I want comfortable seclusion.

That is not to say that I want to ditch my family and friends. I have a wonderful balance right now. We see our family often and meet with different groups of friends on different weekends. Which is as it should be. I just don't want to feel crowded by life. Overwhelmed with communication. Concerned with so many others' issues and burdens that I start to feel buried and become forgetful of my own matters. That has happened in the past and it was absolutely dreadful. It was like I woke up one day and realized I hadn't even been living my own life. I regained control immediately and from that day forward put my life with Gregg first. And that's the way it is going to be - forever.