Pre-Birthday Complaining
Note: Delayed post. These issues have since been addressed but since I didn’t have time to write anything today and this was ready to go I figured it’d buy me time.
I used to have more free time, free will, time to relax, and days off.
I haven’t had a real day off since well before the end of fair, 3 weeks at least. It was my own stupid fault I guess. I decided to spend a bunch of time with the kid first weekend I had off. Well actually that’s not entirely true, I got stuck watching him on my own early in the morning the first day I had off after fair. Couldn’t really sleep in despite my body screaming for rest, I wasn’t given a choice or much notice. So instead of resenting the situation I found myself in I tried to turn it into a positive making it a special weekend for the little guy. I knew my friend Jon was coming next weekend and I wouldn’t be around as much then so I figured it would balance out.
You see, Jon’s in town so very rarely that there’s an accepted convention that when he’s around I clear my schedule and try to make time to hang out with him because it doesn’t happen all that often.
Well apparently something changed because that’s no longer the accepted convention. This time I had to make time to spend more time with the person I live with, the person I see every day and could spend time with reasonably easily most weekends with a little help from grandparents but, for some reason I never discovered, wanting to spend time with my friend that I often have to go half a year without talking to was no longer given the priority clearance it used to receive. To me it’s not a question of priorities, it’s just simple math, economics if you will, trading something in relative abundance for something else in short supply.
But that’s not all, I also had to give up a huge chunk of another day because that was the magic day the friend of my partner decided to buy furniture and needed my partner to transport it. Except they showed up an hour later than planned, took longer than planned, and in the end didn’t need the help! I nearly lost a job because of this (although it worked out in the end), to say nothing of the precious rare time with my best friend. And when I seemed to express some dismay about this, prior to it happening, I was left feeling sorely in the wrong.
Then on the third day I had to not see my friend because the person I live with just had to see a movie with their sister on that exact day. They got the movie times wrong so it took them 5 hours to see the movie, they tell me they sent me a text informing me of the delay but I’m still waiting to receive it.
So to recap I had to give up time with a friend I’m lucky to see once in 6 months one day for spending time with the person I live with every day, one day for the person I live with to NOT help people who can’t be on time to save their lives, and one day to see a movie. Any one of these things wouldn’t have been a big deal, but all three back-to-back-to-back left me a little depressed.
