Things go quick or they don’t go at all, these days. I’m never at home anymore, there’s never enough time to do anything like grocery shopping or laundry or reading or writing blog posts or anything, because either I’ve got dinner with one friend or dinner with another friend or easy-ish yoga or really hard yoga or it’s a coffee at one café or another, a leaving do or another leaving do, drinks at one place or drinks at another place. I have five gifts to get for birthdays in the next two weeks and need to come up with at least two costumes, and let’s not even mention the International Film Festival and all the movies I want to see in July, plus a ski trip to Ohakune and a trip down south to Invercargill, and then soon it will be time to plan my still-imaginary Christmas trip to Cambodia and Malaysia. I’m booking out three weeks in and I’m really glad I spent most of last weekend baking in my pink-and-silver space booties because I basically am never going to be home ever again except to spend a groggy hour in front of the fire before filling up my hot water bottles and collapsing into bed. I keep grousing on about how tired and old I am, how all I want out of life is tea and bickies and the internet and a book and my pink-and-silver space booties, and yet…yet I keep going, I keep saying yes. I have a really good time, mostly.
It’s so stupid to complain about being, for lack of a better word, popular. I know it will end, I know in six months I’ll be whining about how I never dooooooo anything and never goooooo anywhere and never hang ooooouuuuuttt with anyone. I know I will be wistful, at some point, about this time—because if nothing else, this group of friends is going to grow up and get married and have children just like all the others did, and I don’t think I will be able to go on for very much longer hanging out with people so much younger than myself. I think there will come a time when I will just be too tired. Sometimes I think I am already at that time, and sometimes I spend a whole evening enjoyably discussing real estate and breastfeeding and marriage, and then someone suggests I go as Beyonce to a party and I google various kinds of wigs and fill in another box in the paper calendar I still keep. July is full and so is most of August and we’re past the halfway point of the year, we’re deep into winter, and soon I will be thirty-six and then thirty-seven.
There’s more to think and more to write but I don’t have time: I have to fold my laundry from three nights ago and put my lunch together for tomorrow and sort out what I’m going to need clean for Bollywood dancing and write in my paper journal and read my book about houseflies and leeches and squid and buy my film festival tickets and pay my student loan and figure out when to get the next batch of firewood up our 4947298 stairs and email my friend about redesigning the blog and fill my hot water bottles and moisturise my face and everything else–trying to squeeze it all in, make it all fit.
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2 responses to “Squeeze”
Personally, with my 5 Google calendars and paper calendar and events email to friends, I think the exhaustion is worth it. Memories are made of bhangra class and Beyonce costumes, not of sitting at home! But that’s just me, the extreme extrovert talking. I know you need to relax and refresh sometimes. Balance is something we continously have to learn.
After 8.5 years in Wellington, I have come to the conclusion that there is simply no escape from doing stuff in this city. That’s why when I go away, like on beach weekends and to Hamiltron, I am happy to lie down and do NOTHING…..for hours….days….. :) I also carefully schedule in weekly appointment television dates with friends so I can combine my socialising with lying on the couch (in pajamas if desired) and moving very little. And, for the past few years I have actually refused to read the filmfest programme. If people invite me to a particular film, I will read the description and decide if I want to go. But I will not read any of the other ones so that I am blissfully unaware of what I have missed. This approach has reduced my mid-winter stress levels considerably! I guess we all have our own little strategies to try to cope with the squeeze – brought on by us being so fun and popular, and living in a cool city – woe unto us!