Life in the Slow Lane

(originally posted at eclaircie.diaryland.com)

I'm dying to get some roommates. The joy of lounging around naked just because nobody else is around is starting to wear out, and I'd rather have people to talk to. The worst is I keep on catching myself commenting on things on TV out loud even though I know I'm totally alone in the living room.
I've never had this much personal space in my life. I have my own apartment to live in and my own cubicle at work. It's really nice to get to decide for myself where everything goes and nobody disputes it.
But what's there to do?

I read, but it's an activity that gets boring after about an hour. And currently on the agenda is this awful biography of Mary Baker Eddy that it seems like I'll never get through that I'm reading for my term paper.

I watch TV. Never been a huge hobby of mine, but it’s one of those things that keeps noise going in the room, and I’ve watched some fascinating things lately. I’ve been on a History Channel kick lately. Though I actually only have two TV phases, that I just alternate between: the educational one (History Channel, predominately, but some Discovery, some Animal Planet, etc.) and the style/celebrity one (Style Network, HGTV, E!, etc.).

I organize and decorate. All of this space to play with and limited resources to do it with makes for a lot of fun and chances to be creative. Tonight's projects were hanging up a Chinese lantern from the roof with disassembled bobby pins, redoing the order my t-shirts are in my drawers and cutting out stars from wrapping paper to tape onto the empty wall behind the sink.

I walk. It's about a 40 minute walk home from work. I've ridden the bus home three or four times, but most of the time I walk. And I walk up to campus a couple times a week, to buy things or use their computer labs and for church on Sundays. And there are lots of random walks with no purpose but to get out and feel like I'm doing something. It's a nice activity for thinking, which sometimes I think I do too much of lately. And while I'm walking I can't help but wish I was writing. Because the trouble with thoughts is they are gone so fast and only the ones that seem important enough to make a decision to remember at the moment they are thought are held onto.

But I don't write that much after all. A little bit, but…nothing worth mentioning.

And I’m of course pretending that I have absolutely no friends for the sake of making the situation seem that simple, but I do occasionally do things that involve other human beings.