Sick is all around me. Two weeks ago, one of my clients missed the whole week because she was flat on her ass with strep, so her husband (who wasn't feeling much better) took her sessions. Then last week my housemate sat down on Sunday, fell fast asleep on the couch for 5 hours, and then went to bed. He left the house twice over the next 7 days: once to go to the doctor and get diagnosed with the flu and pneumonia, and once to drive down to the drug store in the rain -- a short trip that wiped him out for another 2 days.I cannot get sick! I get paid for my time and I don't get sick days. My mom's coming into town next week, so I especially especially can't miss any time. So I've been ditching out on everything to go home and curl up in bed at the first sign of heavy lungs or swollen glands. Even if it's just a hint of a hint of a hint of getting sick.
But if you want to know the real truth, I don't think I'm going to bed to fight The Sick. If that were true, then I could get out of bed after 10-12 hours of sleep in a 24-hour period. I recognize this feeling, and I don't like it. It's not overtraining. My training's going really well and I'm really enjoying it; even the boring shit like sitting on the trainer for 5.5 hours. And still on a sunny day I just want to pull the pillow over my head and disappear.Warning: This post is a whiny, bitchy pity party about nothing that should be interesting to anyone.
I just need to get it out here, because I have nowhere else I can vent.
I am so, so, so stressed out by work that many times I just can't face the day. I love my job, I love my clients, I like most of the people that I work with. It's just the long days and all the running around that tires the hell out of me. When I'm out there doing it, jumping around to four different locations over 12 hours, it's not bad and I enjoy each station in my day, but it's when I'm lying in my bed first thing in the morning with the cat poking me to be fed and thinking about the entire day ahead of me that I just want to disappear. And it's the fact that this scene repeats itself twice a day sometimes, as my time off occurs in the middle of the day. It's driving to work at 6am when I left work at 8pm the night before.
There are a lot of pieces to keep under control in my life, making sure that I have all the equipment, workouts, shoes, underwear, changes of clothes, food, and other knickknacks that I'll need throughout the day. Most of the time I pull it off, but when it's all laid out in front of me in the morning and my Things to Do List just keeps getting longer, I just keep running back to bed to hide from it all. It's really quite counter-productive. And I promise you, while I'm out there doing it, I'm having fun. Every day I have at least one moment where I think, I love my life! I just wish that I could shut up the voice that says, and first chance I get, I'm going to lie down and shut down.
Enough boo-hooing and on to the solution. On Sunday I didn't change out of my pajamas all day. I just lay around fighting the fake sick and watching the L Word, because you're supposed to spend sunny Sundays watching bad Showtime dramas (and the L Word is so, so bad!). Usually I don't watch dramas about sex and relationships, I prefer to watch shows where someone starts out dead like CSI, Law & Order, and Dexter. But now I've seen all the "dead body" shows and I needed to broaden my horizons, so the soft core lesbian porn on the L Word seemed as good a place as any. I polished off all of Season 2 in one 24-hour period as I folded my laundry and wrote my (clients') workouts for the week.
The last time I watched a lot of sex and relationship dramas was in high school when I used to be obsessed with Ally McBeal and Party of Five, wishing I were skinny like the stars, had sex appeal, and had a group of friends with endless free time to hang out in coffee shops and have long conversations about nothing in particular while a parade of B-class musical guests flowed through for extra long musical interludes. Now, over a decade later I found myself in my pajamas with exactly the same feeling. I so want to be one of the cool kids!
Sure, some things are different now that I'm all grown up. Like I realize that my fascination with the actresses' bodies isn't about being skinny. (By the way, where do I find the real-life lesbians who look like Jennifer Beals and Sarah Shahi? Just another example of the magic of Hollywood, I guess). I realize that I've got much more appeal when I'm being myself than when I'm imitating some actress or fictional character. But right now I've got the same lonely I-don't-fit-anywhere, who-do-I-want-to-be confusion that I had when I was a moody teenager.
So I decided that the reason that I can't get out of bed is because I need friends; Really attractive, incredibly cool, rich, complex and outgoing friends with an abundance of free time who are knock-your-socks-off cool. But where does one find these incredibly cool friends when you go to bed at 9:00 and don't drink?
So I gave myself a dose
of reality. I need a group of really attractive, incredibly driven, fast, adventurous, and witty friends with an abundance of endurance and free time to move over all the coolest roads and trails. In the past I've had little trouble finding my Rachel, Monica, Joey, Chandler, Ross, and Phoebe by just doing my thing and snowballing friends along the way, but these days I do my own thing all by myself while everyone else is busy. At all the races I go to, I talk to everyone that I can and try to be my usual witty, ball-busting self, but California flakiness is even mightier than my charm. I've thought of joining a tri club or something multiple times, but what I want to be doing is always more interesting than what they plan on doing, so I do my thing instead. I have actually said to a woman in a trail running race, "Please be my friend!" and she ran away.
So I have decided that I am going to get more aggressive about making friends. I'm joining my clients for their runs. I'm inviting some of my cooler clients out for coffee. I'm trying to get more
of my work done outside the house in cafés. Yesterday I found myself with two free hours, so I went to the lesbian neighborhood and sat in a café that sells vegan bundt cake and several kinds of tea and watched people go by over my laptop. There were the old lesbians, who turned out to be straight European tourists. There were the fat hipster dykey types who seem to challenge themselves every morning to see how ugly they can make themselves, complete with fat roll hanging out below the t-shirt. There were the alternative types in some combination of skinny jeans, cowboy boots, scarves, and clown-like make-up. None of them looked like the kind of people that I wanted to mix with.
I'm updating my online dating profile and "winking" at girls. I'm looking for a good wing man to take me out to where the cool kids play. Now if only I could drag myself out of bed for any of this stuff!
So I am now open to suggestions. You networking gurus, how do y'all meet all the cool people that you have in your circles? Help an introvert out!
I just need to get it out here, because I have nowhere else I can vent.
I am so, so, so stressed out by work that many times I just can't face the day. I love my job, I love my clients, I like most of the people that I work with. It's just the long days and all the running around that tires the hell out of me. When I'm out there doing it, jumping around to four different locations over 12 hours, it's not bad and I enjoy each station in my day, but it's when I'm lying in my bed first thing in the morning with the cat poking me to be fed and thinking about the entire day ahead of me that I just want to disappear. And it's the fact that this scene repeats itself twice a day sometimes, as my time off occurs in the middle of the day. It's driving to work at 6am when I left work at 8pm the night before.
There are a lot of pieces to keep under control in my life, making sure that I have all the equipment, workouts, shoes, underwear, changes of clothes, food, and other knickknacks that I'll need throughout the day. Most of the time I pull it off, but when it's all laid out in front of me in the morning and my Things to Do List just keeps getting longer, I just keep running back to bed to hide from it all. It's really quite counter-productive. And I promise you, while I'm out there doing it, I'm having fun. Every day I have at least one moment where I think, I love my life! I just wish that I could shut up the voice that says, and first chance I get, I'm going to lie down and shut down. Enough boo-hooing and on to the solution. On Sunday I didn't change out of my pajamas all day. I just lay around fighting the fake sick and watching the L Word, because you're supposed to spend sunny Sundays watching bad Showtime dramas (and the L Word is so, so bad!). Usually I don't watch dramas about sex and relationships, I prefer to watch shows where someone starts out dead like CSI, Law & Order, and Dexter. But now I've seen all the "dead body" shows and I needed to broaden my horizons, so the soft core lesbian porn on the L Word seemed as good a place as any. I polished off all of Season 2 in one 24-hour period as I folded my laundry and wrote my (clients') workouts for the week.The last time I watched a lot of sex and relationship dramas was in high school when I used to be obsessed with Ally McBeal and Party of Five, wishing I were skinny like the stars, had sex appeal, and had a group of friends with endless free time to hang out in coffee shops and have long conversations about nothing in particular while a parade of B-class musical guests flowed through for extra long musical interludes. Now, over a decade later I found myself in my pajamas with exactly the same feeling. I so want to be one of the cool kids!So I decided that the reason that I can't get out of bed is because I need friends; Really attractive, incredibly cool, rich, complex and outgoing friends with an abundance of free time who are knock-your-socks-off cool. But where does one find these incredibly cool friends when you go to bed at 9:00 and don't drink?
So I gave myself a dose
of reality. I need a group of really attractive, incredibly driven, fast, adventurous, and witty friends with an abundance of endurance and free time to move over all the coolest roads and trails. In the past I've had little trouble finding my Rachel, Monica, Joey, Chandler, Ross, and Phoebe by just doing my thing and snowballing friends along the way, but these days I do my own thing all by myself while everyone else is busy. At all the races I go to, I talk to everyone that I can and try to be my usual witty, ball-busting self, but California flakiness is even mightier than my charm. I've thought of joining a tri club or something multiple times, but what I want to be doing is always more interesting than what they plan on doing, so I do my thing instead. I have actually said to a woman in a trail running race, "Please be my friend!" and she ran away.So I have decided that I am going to get more aggressive about making friends. I'm joining my clients for their runs. I'm inviting some of my cooler clients out for coffee. I'm trying to get more
I'm updating my online dating profile and "winking" at girls. I'm looking for a good wing man to take me out to where the cool kids play. Now if only I could drag myself out of bed for any of this stuff!
So I am now open to suggestions. You networking gurus, how do y'all meet all the cool people that you have in your circles? Help an introvert out!
5 comments:
By stalking people who write awesome blogs.
You're welcome.
-Peej
And on a more serious note, I hear you with "the busy." The going/going/going takes a lot out of you and I don't think we realize it until we're trashed and laying on the couch fighting "the sick." I'm not sure if there's a way to avoid it when you have a certain mentality so it's pretty much invitable that we're going to burn out at some point....and then start the whole cycle over.
As far as making friends, I went through the same thing as you did when I moved from the midwest to Boston. It took some time but I found that once I found one or two good friends, they introduced me to their friends and then I was all set. Post-race venues aren't so bad for finding people with similar likes as well. There may be some drinking involved but most racers aren't going to get smashed after a half ironman, you know?
Good luck.
I can totally relate. I need some friends who are working parents that also like to work out- a lot. I can't seem to find any. Hope you have better luck than I have been having.
First, I would suggest doing some work on that to-do list. I'll send you some resources that I've been using recently that have helped me focus a lot, and simply tossed a bunch of items that weren't worth dealing with at this point. Might help you a little!
Given my effervescent personality, it might be a surprise that I don't make friends easily. :) So I will be useless here, I think. Although, maybe the tri or cycling club is worth a shot at least. You don't have to do EVERY workout with them. Pick once or twice a week that works with your schedule and use it as a recovery ride, or don't even think about it in the context of your training. It's simply a means to meeting new people, and leave it at that. That attitude about it might make it easier to join the group now and again.
Oh - and I was totally Monica, right? :)
Miss you.
I think I fit everything but the rich part, well ok the free time thing is gone too.
On the sick thing one of my roommates gave me part of his head cold so I spent Tuesday night under the covers watching house and sweating out the chills, so I think it's just going around.
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