Cranky

I'm getting cranky.

It's happening slowly. I like my job and I like having Meredith here. I like that Meredith and Chris are getting to know each other better and getting along. I like my basic schedule, I like that I have plenty of time to go running before work in the morning, I like the group of people I work with. I even like my new chair.

But I'm getting cranky.

It was bound to catch up with me eventually, this not having enough time to myself. More than anything else I miss having time to read and write. I miss playing Scrabble. I miss not having to make meaningful choices about how to spend my time, confident in the sensation of there always being enough time, too much time, a pornography of time, more than enough hours in the day to read and write and run and talk to my friends and obsess over ridiculous TV and see movies. Maybe what I miss is: being an adolescent.

And yet, I am thrilled to be able to make meaningful choices about how I spend my time. It's a strange conundrum.

As the summer goes on I'll be able to jigger my schedule so that I can finally edit my book and send it off. Right now, at night, I feel this enormous pressure to be social, whether that means going out to dinner or seeing movies or just watching stupid TV instead of taking time to finish the book I'm enjoying or to edit my own writing or whatever else I might want to do. I feel like the only good excuse that people accept for antisocial behavior is the excuse of having work to do, and yet most of the time I prefer to be antisocial, on my own. Not in the sociopathic crazed lunatic kind of way but in the way that prefers quiet to noise, stillness to chaos, and my own company most of the time. During respites from the antisocial norm I have always been relentlessly, drivenly social. I make friends easily. But the social periods have worked exactly because I've had the backdrop of solitude against which most of my time has been spent.

Is this what real life is like, or what it means to be a grown-up?

I even like my life. I'm even happy with my current situation. But once in a while, like now, it's just going to make me a little cranky.