Come home from work. Make dinner. Play with the girls. Get them ready for bed. Put them to bed. Sit at the computer. Go to sleep.
Okay, maybe it’s not THAT bad. But this is what I see when I look at many nights of my life. This is very hard to talk about. I’m a bit embarrassed.
It stops now.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot about priorities and trying to figure out how do to do the things that need to get done so that I have time for the things I want to do.
My biggest issue is getting distracted and then procrastinating. Mainly with my computer and social media. I get distracted by what everyone else is doing. Who wrote what on their blog. Who’s doing what on Twitter. Who’s chatting it up on this mom’s forum or that.
But there is a bigger issue. One that has always haunted me since, probably, high school.
I have this strange urge to want to be a part of everything and if some is doing something with out me, I feel I’m missing something.
I know. I did say it was strange. People have friends other than me. I know this. It would be weird for people to only be friends with me.
This then spurs another issue… not focusing enough on my family and the good friends that I already have.
Last weekend, I met up with a friend and her kids who I haven’t seen in a long. We were talking about friendships and she said something to me, that really struck a chord:
“How can I be so-and-so’s friend if they don’t ask about me.”
We were talking about how friendships require work from both sides. But it’s not like I don’t know this. Relationships, in all forms, require work from both sides.
I have a husband whom I love and we have great communication and a great friendship. But when you’re living under the same roof there I don’t need to put out a lot effort to talk to him; he’s always there. His friendship is very easy which is part of the reason I fell in love with hm and why we’re still in love today.
My other friendships aren’t as strong. This could be partially my fault. If I have been so distracted by other things, I may have missed the fact that my friends have tried and I just wasn’t reciprocating equally.
So other than completely disconnecting myself with the internet world (that would definitely solve all the problems), I need to cut back on the time I spend trying to know what everyone else is doing. I need to focus on my life…not everyone else’s.
I just hope that I haven’t ruined too many friendships by being so out of touch.
