Alone Time
posted in General |Working at home, I get a lot of time alone. I take Miss B to school, and take Miss K to the sitter, and then I’m alone. I’m supposed to be working, but once in a while I get distracted. Also, Mrs B has been taking the girls to bed when she retires for the night; I stay up until eleven (when I’m on call) or midnight (when I’m not); again, I’m supposed to be working, but sometimes I’m working on my Everquest 2 character(s).
When I’m working from home, I’ve always got the phone to answer, email, IM, and I’ve got an open chat window to campfire, our discussion tool. That’s not really solitude. I get my best “me time” at night between Mrs B’s bedtime and mine.
I need a lot of me-time. I always have. Reading that article reminds me that books and other engrossing activities also provide me-time. Mrs B gets way, way more into a book than I do. Ever since Ms B was born, it’s been a lot harder for me to give up on keeping tabs on the outside world. Lately, I’ve been annoyed at how easily Mrs B gets sucked away from us- but she doesn’t get as much time by herself as I do. We can cohabitate a room, companionably, and since we’re each doing our “thing,” we’re both relaxing and in solitide. Maybe this is one reason why our relationship is so strong- we can give each other some space. To keep our relationship stronger, I should run interference with whatever’s pestering her for attention, rather than trying to help it (case in point: when Miss B is trying to get Mrs B’s attention while Mrs B is reading a book, sometimes I’ll poke Mrs B to pull her out of the book)
When we were married, part of our vows came from Kahlil Gibran:
But let there be spaces in your togetherness and let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
It’s a fairly common reading, but maybe it’s helped us stay strong.
