I feel like these days, I struggle the most with balance. Balance with my friendships, balance with my relationship, and balance in my work. While I love my job, I have a love/hate relationship with my hours. Out of the 15 people in my office, I am the only one who works four nights a week and at least two weekend days a month, if not more depending on how many classes we have on a weekend day. Really, what it means is that while my coworkers are able to balance working late hours one or two nights a week with seeing friends, family, and their loved ones, all of my socialization is done on the weekends I do not have work.
Unfortunately, working at least two weekends a month means I have very little time to actually go out and socialize. Working a weekend day means my Friday night, Saturday, and often, my Saturday night is shot simply because I need to get to bed early on Friday night to make it to work before 8am on Saturday. Our classes typically do not end until 6pm, at which point I am exhausted just from sheer boredom and the number of hours I spent in the office without much social interaction. Now that G is up in Baltimore, it is easier because I can just meet him at one of our houses, have a low-key night, and pass out before it even hits 10pm. But working all those weekend hours means that it is difficult to meet up with friends, especially during the summer when everyone travels or heads out of town for wedding after wedding after wedding. When I get invited to potluck dinners or happy hours during the week, I always hate having to say no. I can’t help wondering when they inevitably will stop inviting me, tired of hearing no.
I also struggle with knowing that Baltimore has a huge culture of drinking. When some of my friends who are only a few years removed from their undergraduate degree invite me out to meet them at the bars at 10pm, I almost always end up saying thank you but no thank you. Part of it is I have better things to spend my money on, and part of it is I am just an old fart these days. I like quiet, intimate dinners or movie marathons or going to a park, a beach, or a pool rather than drinking. I phased out of the bar scene about six months after I turned twenty-one. Six years later, that really hasn’t changed much.
It’s difficult for me to not resent my job at times for keeping me from an active social life. I also worry that I am going to resent G for being able to see his friends during the week after work, and not feeling as compelled to do things on the weekends because he got his socialization out of the way. When I want to go places or do things, he often wants to stay home and relax because our schedules are so opposite. He leaves home at 7:30 in the morning and comes back at 8:30 in the evening, before passing out at 9:30. If he meets up with a friend, he gets home later. I leave home at 1:30 in the afternoon and come back at 10:30 in the evening. Where I am able to go to the gym and get errands done during those hours before work, he has to wait until the weekend to get those things done. We struggle with trying to balance fun with needs – in my case, I want to go out and do things and he needs to get things done. Need tends to win over fun.
If more people were around or not booked every weekend, it would be so much easier for me to say, “Hey, you stay here and do this, I’ll go out with x and do things I want to do.” But that seems to be more and more difficult the older you get and the more people become consumed with their relationships and families. And so I end up getting frustrated.
In other ways, I feel like once you become part of a relationship, people write you off and assume you will always be with your partner. That probably is correct, but I am missing that sort of companionship that I would get from my other friends. I surprised myself with the intensity of feelings I experience for G, but at the same time, I don’t only want to be viewed as G’s girlfriend. I was an individual long before I met him, and sometimes I worry I am losing my individuality because I don’t have any other outlets socially to separate the me I am in a relationship with the me I was before I met G. I guess part of it comes from not knowing how to be in a relationship, given that I really haven’t been physically present in one since I was in high school. With relationship experience comes knowing how to balance.
So I guess that’s where I am now. Trying to figure out if/when I should start looking for a new job, if I should start pushing harder about building more friendships not based around drinking, etc. I feel like no matter where I am in my life, the one thing I always struggle with is balance. And right now, I’m feeling a bit adrift.
I felt like this up till about two months ago; I now have a M-F 9-5 kinda job, though I definitely stay later many nights and check in on emails and social media during the weekend. It has helped and allows me to catch up with friends more often, but perhaps not as much as I imagined…people DO get busier the older we get, I also never was into the bar scene and some of my friends choose to live ridiculously far out in the burbs. What it has helped is actually given me back couple time and we are enjoying our shared weekends – it’s almost like being back at the start of our relationship. Only you can make the decision when to leave your job – but I definitely think balance for most people is a lifelong struggle, moreso at certain times than others.