S t r e t c h e d T h i n

I feel like I’m shrinking. My brain, heart, and soul are oozing over the multitude of things going on in my life, like an egg cracked over a frying pan... whites and yoke creeping into the crevices and corners growing ever thinner as they spread.

I feel like I’m suffocating. I think of the list of things to do — at work, home, and for me — and can’t make out what comes first. I write more lists than I know what to do with... like a chimpanzee, one evolutionary step short of making human sense.

I feel like I’m lost. I can’t make out what goes where and which way’s up... like I’m suspended in a cosmic space with the pressure of the world crushing my body, darkness seeping into my bones.

And yet, I don’t seem to feel anything. I’m not really angry, as I have been in the past. I’m not too frustrated, as I often get. I’m not sad or disappointed or depressed, which lack of social contact often makes me. It’s like I don’t have time to feel.

Instead, while I plow forth with the tasks for which I am responsible, a movie reel plays in the back of my mind. I’m wandering the world. Reading Harry Potter in the orange hammock in Camarat, overlooking the Med. Meeting new and different people from exotic cultures, laughing joyfully with complete strangers. I’m elsewhere, starting from scratch, with no one around that I am responsible to.

But the real world always dominates, and I continue with what I’m doing, content to travel the globe in day dreams and what adventures unfold on the back of my eyelids late at night. I stay at work from 8:30 to 8:30. I arrive home to walk the dog for five minutes. I do the dishes and fold a blanket or two. I call my mother. I think about my friends, although they may not know it. And then I call it a day.

Then I wonder who’s benefiting from this crazy life.

Is it my clients? Probably not, for while I get my work done, I could be more strategic with more time. So maybe my co-workers? No, because with so much on my plate, some things are bound to fall of.

Then is it my friends? Definitely not, as there are people who I haven’t spoken to since before Christmas, and can’t find the time to even e-mail. And my family? Cousins in France have written and received no response. Family in Massachusetts see me briefly if they’re on my way from work to home, but they all wonder why I don’t return phone calls.

What about my dog? She’s not happy, as the poor girl hardly sees the outdoors unless she comes to work with me. Maybe my roommate? Well, in that case it probably doesn’t matter, as I live with a boy and he could care less if the sink sparkles or not... although my “OCD” makes me cranky in such an environment, so maybe this craziness affects him afterall.

Is it me? If I truly live for the moment, if I truly live for fun, then definitely not. What fun can be found in moments so fleeting that 12hrs of work still isn’t enough to complete the day’s chores? And life & fun are the most important things to me on my most selfish days.

My conclusion? Everyone loses.


There are only so many hours in each day; use them efficiently.
But there are only so many hours in a lifetime; make each one count.