Quiet Time

I'm sitting here. On my couch (read: futon). Watching an intellectual documentary (read: Kardashians). Bettering myself as a person (read: doing my nails - you know what this is). I'm alone. The man is out. The roommate is out. It's kinda weird.

Honestly I hate alone time. I don't know what do to, there's no one to talk to which means I have to talk to myself because, naturally, I can't not talk.

I know plenty of people who love having some peace and quiet. I envy that because it seems really nice. I would love to curl up with a book and a blanket, passing an evening with my cats or something. But I have the attention span of a three-year-old and a nasty kitty allergy. So what am I to do?

Having lived alone for more than a year and now cohabitating, I absolutely dread having the house to myself. There are so many possibilities, so many options... and there's the interwebs, where I usually end up, creating outfits I don't have on Pinterest and reading about the crafty DIYers I'll never compare to. But is that so bad? Sometimes it's nice to turn your mind off, right?

Personally I chalk a lot of my restlessness during what should be my time of rest and relaxation to my age. I don't have homework and haven't for years, of course. Not at the homeowner stage yet (and likely to never get there. Let's face it, I'm broke), I find there's only so much to clean, only so much to organize, and, frankly, I hate doing both of those things.

So help me out – what does everybody else do on those quiet nights at home? Pjs and a movie? Polishing off “War and Peace?” Seriously, why is it so hard to find a hobby? 

See? I wasn't kidding about that. It's bad. 

  

First World Problems: We Got Cable, and Suddenly My Three-Bed Is Too Small

I’m an introvert. I know the internet is currently on tail-end of its “WTF IS AN INTROVERT” phase, but it’s relevant. I much prefer quiet and solitude. I need personal space. Lots of it. It's hard to come by when a) you work in an open plan office, b) live with your boyfriend, and c) do not have a personal space in your own apartment. Right now it’s causing a lot of emotional distance problems in my relationship. I'm not checked in, I admit it.

When we were finally forced to get our own internet and stop mooching off the landlord, Lennon put the account in his name, and got us some goddamn fancy FIOS. The kind that has cable. I have never owned a television, and the last house I lived in that had some form of TV entertainment (besides my parents') was in my sophomore year of college. His television was old, and not flat. We have limited space. You can see where this is going.

Not here, though.

Enter his (he paid for it) new television. I like putting on pilates, yoga, or watching Netflix via the XBOX. I could do all this with my laptop, but TV is bigger and nicer and the sound isn’t coming out of a three-year-old Macbook’s blown-out speakers. The rest of the time, it drives me a little crazy.

Did you know TV still has ads?

Lennon is a media junkie with ADD. He’s an multi-concentrator. Last night when we got home from dinner, he started watching Family Guy on television, and a nerd-stuff webseries. At the same time. With audible volume on both. I have a thing where if there’s more than one type of noise going on at a particular volume, I can’t concentrate on anything but getting out of there as fast as possible.

I took my Kindle into the bedroom to read, just like every night since we got the television. At the end of the day I am desperate for quiet. Lennon is desperate for distraction. We don’t spend time together in the late evening anymore. I know we don’t have to watch television: he can turn it off and read comics, or play on his phone, or any number of other things.

But the television asks the least of him, and he needs that recharge too.

It's not a total wash; the quiet downtime is necessary for me to continue functioning. But, relegated to the bedroom because of the TV... there is no space left in the apartment to be mine.

I’d love the solution to be setting aside another room, so he can be comfortable owning spaces in the rest of the apartment. Unfortunately, everything I would use to furnish it is needed elsewhere, and I don’t want to take anything away for fear I will say he can use the room for a specific purpose and suddenly it will "belong" to him... which is what tends to happen.

I'm very good about respecting other people's spaces. I don't like disturbing the energy, or otherwise changing the feel of it. I try to keep my own energy small if I'm in there. It's why Lennon now has the whole office and I generally don't go in there except to get a book from a shelf, or if I need to work from home. I don't go into his dressing room (the second bedroom) unless I need the iron, or a towel from the closet. The kitchen is common space. The living room is common space. The front bedroom is big closet storage and the rabbit's space, because she's destructive, and pulls books off the shelf.

And she will eat them.

Houston, we have a problem. We have a three-bedroom apartment, and I don't even fit in it.