Monday, June 5, 2006

What's on my heart today? My friends. (Pardon me while I whine.)

As most of you know, my current job as a Guest Services representative at The Ice Gardens has had me working a lot of evenings since I started, mainly because there currently is no day shift; during the school year, people really only come to play hockey when they are done school or work for the day. At the end of the month, the hockey camps will start up and a day shift will be put on the schedule, but that is a couple weeks away yet; for now, if I am working, I am working in the evening. This is having a side effect on me that I hadn't expected to be as bad as it is: I am feeling isolated from my friends, from my family, and from having a life in general. See, most people out there work during the day and get together with or talk to their friends in the evening, when work is over. Right now, though, when I get the urge to talk to someone, they are generally at work and it would be inappropriate to call them, even if they were able to take the call. Now that I have asked to have my Wednesday evenings off and have always asked to have my Sundays off, I am scheduled to work more Saturdays, which further cuts down the chances that I'll be able to get together with my friends (though not having my driver's license yet contributes to that problem, too). Working late also causes me to sleep in more than I normally would, and then the non-work time that I do have has to be used for the domestic and church ministry duties that fall by the wayside far too easily when I am tired and need a lot of catching up on as a result, further reducing the time available to me for social interaction. On my days off, I am happy just to be able to see my husband, and feel a certain obligation to spend some "just us" time with him rather than make him share me with other people. Of course, most of my friends are busy people themselves, so even when I do get a window of opportunity to see people, there's no guarantee that it will work out. I can't even remember the last time I got together with friends outside of Bible study night; even the invitations to do things have pretty much stopped since people are used to me being unable to attend things (or maybe they think I'm unwilling). I think you can see why my MSN Messenger message was "I don't have a life; I work evenings" for a while recently.

Oh well, things will be getting better soon, hopefully. Like I said, the hockey camps start at the end of this month, so hopefully I will see more day shifts soon. There's also a Bible study group I'm going to be attending starting June 14 (I've booked off my Wednesday evenings from work so I know I'll be able to attend), which isn't the same as getting together with friends just to see each other but is good nonetheless. I'm also supposed to be seeing the movie version of The Da Vinci Code with a friend this week, so as long as that is still on that will help, too. Still, I hope y'all understand that if I haven't seen you or talked to you for a while, it's not because I don't love you and not because I'm antisocial; I'm missing the love myself as well.

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