Tomorrow marks the beginning of the first weekend I've really had "off" since coming back from an extended trip to Hong Kong last July. This is also the first time I've left Vancouver in almost a year. I think the farthest I've gone in the last several months has been Surrey. The first weekend off. In. Almost. A. Year.
Thinking that makes me feel more tired than not thinking that.
It's made me wonder what stuff I'm really made of, and whether I'm more of a workaholic than I think I am. I tend not to think so, since I do manage down time so that, like a distance runner, you take refreshments along the way instead of taking long breaks like everyone else. At least, this is the theory.
Yet when I think about it today, I'm tired. Maybe it's because I pushed myself pretty hard this weekend and had to be a great deal more extroverted than usual. I sort of horrified myself last night when I pushed myself to go to a friend's place for dinner and found myself being one of the chattiest people in attendance. Yes, horrified. That's not me. That's me still being pastor and making everyone feel loved and at home-- even when it wasn't my home! I walked away from that dinner wondering what was going on with me that I couldn't just be all right with being quiet like so many other people were. After all, the majority of people there were Regent students. They'd understand the need for silence. I wonder if they walked away thinking that the Chinese guy with the scrubby chin patch was an extrovert or else in need of being the center of attention.
No, I'm not. Or am I?
I felt myself crash a little this afternoon as I picked up friends from the airport and we bumped into someone I hadn't seen for close to a decade. We were never close even when we were in the same church, but somehow we ended up eating with her and her father. I felt myself switching off for long periods and just spacing out. I didn't mind eating with my two very good friends, but somehow, adding someone more really broke my back. I knew I wasn't being very good company, but in a fit of childishness, I really didn't care. Like my vacuum cleaner that shuts down every so often because of high heat, I was shutting down because I wasn't really able to cool off. Normally, Sunday evenings are me + couch + beer. Mondays are long runs and general monkishness. Tuesdays are on my ass dwelling in my head writing stuff few people care about. But tip that balance just a little and I start, well, overloading.
It made me wonder how I'll ever handle family life-- if that's even something I want anymore. Perhaps that's an unduly pessimistic thing to say, but the general feeling as I went for a run today was that much of what I know myself by at this time in my life-- a man who cherishes his solitude-- would largely evaporate into a cloud of unmet expectations from other people. I began to wonder if the trade off was worth it after all, and whether growing mouldy in this same apartment, churning out novels no one will ever read, is not the life for me. (yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.)
Then, upon returning from my run, I stretched in front of the TV and watched the Simpsons. Edna Krabappel was draped over a railing staring wistfully at Homer and Marge tamping gunpowder into homemade fireworks. Then she sighed, and thought "
I wish I had someone to share this with."
That restored me a little. Sometimes I focus so much on the drain of my resources that I forget the other side of things, the blessing of friends and family that I do get to share my life with. All of a sudden, desire made sense again. I don't often get the positive side of family life shared with me. Most married people and people with kids often wax moany about their lack of personal time and space. I suppose as a pastor I ought to get used to people bellyaching about one thing or another, but I'm almost positive you never do-- nor should you. Yet I realized then that I don't hear about the other side often enough; that giggling children are a joy to have and that husbands and wives are a pleasure to hold.
Part of me is tempted to respond next time to a congregant's whingeing about their wife/husband/kids by simply asking "
so why don't you just leave them if they're making your life so miserable?" All right, so it's not the most sensitive thing to say, and I'll probably never say it, but it's just mad enough that it might be better than a slap upside the head. (Which, I think, some people could still use.) I suppose the pastoral thing to say would be "
you've been talking a lot about the downside of commitment. But what are the blessings of where you're at?" (Statements like this, by the way, are why single pastors sometimes get treated like eunuchs.) Yet the principle remains the same. What would life be like if it was bereft of the blessings we all have?
Writing is a blessing and a curse. I get to use words-- glorious words!-- to tell everyone exactly how they feel. It is a curse because it takes a tremendous amount of time, energy, and a dash of insanity to work at something as ethereal as a story. Yet would my life be better for not having it? No. I wouldn't be me. I wouldn't be the guy who writes extremely long (and, admittedly, sometimes pointless) blogs about every little thing that comes into his head. I wouldn't know myself outside of the streams of thought that I sometimes am able to direct onto a page.
Living alone is also a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, I can eat, sleep, read, write, and run whenever I want to. I even get to defecate with the door open! But the downside is waking up in the middle of the night and feeling frightened by the dark-- and having no one to talk to about it. The downside is feeling like going for a vacation, but not wanting to go somewhere alone. Maybe it's just because almost all of my guy friends are married or have girlfriends that I find myself in the latter situation, but at least the girls I know get to go away with other single girls. Me? I sit at home and dream about going to Istanbul. Guys don't go on the sorts of vacations I'm interested in-- they go to Vegas, a place I have about as much interest in as getting kicked in the head.
Sigh. It's not as though I'm not looking forward to Edmonton. I just wish I had someone to share this all with.
I guess I do. You.
Comments (1)
That last paragraph resonated with me....though the defecating bit was T.M.I. (too much info)!! ha ha! Yes I suppose girls can have the girl trips...but there are still places I wouldn't travel to with just girls either....Istanbul being one of the places I've thought about. And Egypt and India and Saudi Arabia...
"Someone to share this all with"...what we all want.