I like my alone time. I like to be all by myself. I think that I am an introvert and an extrovert, but I also realize how much my alone time means to me. All day long I am surrounded by people, and that is not a bad thing. The only time I have to myself is the 45 minutes in the morning before I leave, and my 10 minute drive to my carpool. From 6:35 A.M until bedtime, I am around people. I am a teacher so I am talking all day long and I am ON all day long. I don't get a chance to zone out for an hour during the day, nor do I have the ability to take a 15 minute "coffee break" (I don't drink coffee, me on caffeine is a deadly combo) to recharge my batteries.
I did not realize that I was introvert until I started to teach. Prior to teaching I was in grad. school living in my 1 bedroom apartment by myself. I was alone for really long periods of time.
Today as I was running, I kept asking myself why I like to be alone sometimes? I don't have an answer to that question. I just know that I enjoy it.
I have a friend who says she has social anxiety. Except she says that rather than getting stressed out about being with people, she gets stressed out about not being with the group when there is something going on. For her, being with people is thrilling, exciting, and refreshing. For me, that is not the case. I like getting to hang out with friends, and I like to talk to people, but I really cherish time by myself.
When I am alone it is not like I do anything bad, I just dink around my house. I clean, pick up clutter, I listen to music, watch t.v. and read.
When I first got married, I thought this was a bad thing. I thought that I should not want to be alone or desire to have alone time. But, I realized that is not the case. P married me because of who I am. And part of me is at times a quiet introvert who prefers to eat dinner sitting on the counter than anywhere else. I know that at times, when things get hectic and rough, I need to be alone. I need that time of solitude to think and process and reboot.
So tonight I am alone. P went to play in an indoor soccer game, and he will be back late, past my bedtime of 9p.m so I decided not to go with him. Here I am alone at my house enjoying the 1st peace and quiet I have heard in 13 hours. It is soothing to my soul.
But, there is a big part of me that can't wait for P to get home and tell me about his game. One of the greatest sounds I have ever heard is P's voice and laugh. It is music to my ears. His voice can be so calming and soothing, and at other times it can be commanding.
Tonight, I will get a few things done tonight, enjoy my quiet time and eat dinner sitting on my kitchen counter.
I guess I am the type of girl who wants her cake and to eat it also.
Live Simply-Live Well
3 comments:
So funny you write about this today. I am home alone for the first time in a long time. actually, I don't even remember the last time I was home alone. I have to talk all day too so when I get home I do like just being quiet. I get a lot of socialization through work. When I am home, I am just glad to be home.
I completely understand what you are saying. I love being alone too, not all the time but I do cherish my alone time. My fiance' lives in CA and I am in WA, so right now we are dealing with a lot of alone time. I know it won't always be this way, so I am enjoying it now and will try to remember later how nice it was. But I am really looking forward to getting married too. :)
I'm the exact same way! I work about 40 minutes from where I teach, and I can't imagine living any closer because just being alone in the car is a nice decompression time for me. I really love to get home and be alone for a few hours to clean up and catch up on reading. Maybe it's a teacher thing, because you're right, for 8 hours a day there really is no break from being "on" - I don't even stop working while I eat lunch! My bf is coaching baseball right now (he's also a teacher), so I get tons of it and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Because every evening, just when I'm starting to feel lonely - he comes home :)
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