Life As Performance Art 16

It has become incredibly difficult coordinating to meet up with friends. Some are just neurotic and precious (and, I think rather self-centred) and cannot imagine going to a coffee shop after 2 in the afternoon, even though they are retired and really have all the time in the world. Others have more reasonable obstacles to contend with, such as an erratic and demanding work schedule, or family and spousal commitments that have to be fulfilled for their own lives to hold together. In my case, my work is stressful and I need downtime, often away from other people, even from friends. This has absolute squat to do with the nonsensical and fictitious binary of extrovert and introvert and everything to do with the fact that when I'm working with needy adults, I morph by osmosis into everyone's caregiver, including my closest friends, and even from them (sometimes especially from my friends) I will particularly need a break in order to rest and recover. Socializing in the evenings does not work, because that is when I am usually most tired and really I want to get into bed by 9:30 every night, if I want to get a decent sleep, start my day reasonably early and keep somewhat tolerable this vicious cycle. I also live downtown. My neighbourhood tends to get rather ugly with people out for a good time after 6 in the afternoon, and this makes stepping out onto the sidewalk all the more stressful and unsafe for me, when really what I am needing is peace and quiet and relative solitude and refuge from selfish and narcissistic idiots in order to recover from the day, and prepare myself for good restorative sleep, so that I can be any real use to others the following day. A lot of people I know are in the same boat as I am, so it is really hard for us to coordinate our schedules. It never used to be this difficult, and I hear this from a lot of people. So, what happened? Are we really that busy? Could it be that so many of us are so distracted by social media and our little tech toys that we don't know when to put them down, or better, leave them at home, and actually engage more with real, living and breathing human beings? I don't have a mobile phone, yet it is hard even for me. But my job is particularly demanding and stressful, and I am not young, so I need more rest than I used to. And I also want to live with balance. I'm not really sure how I'm going to do this. I think if we're all willing to be more flexible, and if we value one another enough, then we will be able to, then we can hold together, and we can help build a real sense of community against this monolith of greed and misery that our governments have been forcing onto us. This could be well worth thinking of during this spring and Easter, this time and season of rebirth and renewal. At the very least, to stay in touch with one another and remind us all that we are in this together and that even if we are too often absent from one another there is still a silent spiritual cord that bonds us all together.