Tuesday, July 23, 2002  10:14 pm  <|>
<153> Pulled in all directions: You know it's really tough to make everyone happy all of the time... but it seems this is my lot in life all too often. Now I hate to complain, because for the most part I guess, I bring it on myself. I mean, I choose whether or not I help everyone or not and just how far I take it I suppose, but really at the same time quite often I don't have much of a choice. I don't know. I want my friends to be happy. I want everyone to be happy. But it does sometimes backfire on me. It does sometimes put me through the same, if not more, of what the person I'm helping is going through and I'm not sure that's quite fair either. Things aren't limited to helping single people either. I feel obligated to a lot of things sometimes. Obligations to the people who view this site, not to mention all my past and current viewers to my old site who I still hear from on a daily basis, them inquiring as to when I will reopen the site. For awhile I intended to reopen it, then I hit a point where I doubted it would ever happen, and now I'm back to wanting to redesign and reopen it again. This is all well and good, especially because you would think I'd have an abundance of time to do this right now, but in all honesty I do not. I don't know where all my time goes really, but it does and before I know it the week ends and begins all together in this blur of time and the summer is quickly ticking away. So I probably have no one to blame but myself for this lack of time, but really I can't figure out why I feel so pushed sometimes. I try to make time for work (I have to and want to). I try to make time for friends, for ALL my friends. I try to make time for everything that I need to but I find there just aren't enough hours in the day. With dialysis taking up 12 hours of my week, which is actually quite more than that between driving and waiting extra time that goes along with it too that is already a big gap in my week. Still, I can attempt to be slightly productive while I am there, but this proves to be most difficult most of the time. I used to get some editing done for work before my laptop crashed, but now it is tough to drag my mother's laptop there (though lately I've been very tempted to do it ). So otherwise I instead "waste" the time by reading or playing gameboy (which has become my latest addiction believe it or not). So then there is the rest of my time. Part of it goes into sleep and rest, which can take up more time than I'd like it to. This is followed by other "killing" time hours which might include watching tv or going online and doing non productive things, which I try to limit, but I do need some down time once in awhile when I just don't feel like doing anything else. Then there is travel time between going back and forth from my home in nj and my place in philadelphia. And this is only some of where my time goes. I obviously put a bunch of time into my work and my friends. Life takes time. I know this. Just lately I don't feel like I have near enough and aside from work and friends and dialysis, for the most part my commitments should end there somehow I think. Oh yeah, and I suppose there should be a commitment to myself in there someplace too right? How easy it was for me to forget.

Look, I'm really not trying to say it's so horrible to help people or to have such essential commitments... everyone does and everyone deals. All I'm saying is it's not always easy and sometimes people need to understand this. I can't be in two places at once. I can't please everyone at the same time or by the same means. I can't get everything that I want and neither can you, not by a long shot, so we'll have to just deal with all of these realizations together. What I *might* be able to do is help how I can, I can listen and I can talk as much as you want. I can come and *visit* because I am in a constant state of visiting. There is a lot I can do for everyone that probably won't kill me, so allow me to give what I can, where I can, and be understanding of where I fall short. It doesn't seem like so much to ask, some of you ask much more, so at least knowing this we might be able to come to some sort of understanding...