The Strangers I Know

Ever suddenly realize you have nothing in common with someone, absolutely nothing at all? This seems almost impossible and something of an odd nature for me, as I am always able to find some common interest with almost anyone I meet. That all changed Monday morning.

After replaying a conversation in my head, I realized there is someone out there that I have absolutely nothing in common with. Nothing... at... all. The conversation that started all of this was about what we each did on our weekend. My response was my entire three-day weekend was spent working on the web site, our print zine, house errands, filling out grants and writing. There wasn't even enough time to get it all done. I spent the entire weekend working on things to help me get to a point where I can full fill a dream. Suddenly I felt my answer being brushed aside by this person. It was if they didn't hear a word that I said. It's the feeling I always get when someone starts talking about themselves before I have end finished answering their question. I wouldn't have been so upset had it been an important reason to interrupt. I could easily understand that, but all this person did was go on and on about how they spent the entire weekend (that's from Friday when they got home from work, till Sunday when they went to bed) sitting on a couch, watching a DVD box set. In fact, they were upset when they had to stop watching to go buy food. This is what this person does pretty much every single weekend. I could understand if this person was reviewing the DVD's as part of their job, but that isn't what is going on here. This person just sits and watches TV... for days.

How do you spend your life like this? Continually wasting your days watching TV, letting your life pass you by. I spend every available minute working towards my dreams. I don't have the luxury of being able to watch TV for hours on end. My max of TV watching for the week is the hour I get to watch Most Haunted and the occasional movie on Scream TV. It's considered a miracle if I watch more than that. I was actually quite shocked when I had a week that I actually made the time for myself to watch three movies on Scream TV. Even then I wasn't able to watch the movies from beginning to end. I just don't have time and cannot seem to wrap my head around those who don't have the drive to improve themselves, make their lives more interesting. Isn't Sloth one of the seven deadly sins?

The other thing that is starting to bother me as well is this person constantly complains that they have no social life, they don't date nor do anything interesting. "That's because you don't leave your couch!!!!!!!!!!!!" They whine and whine and whine and it's starting to get to me. I also have a college friend whose entire goal in life was to get married, own a perfect home, a cat, a dog and 2.5 kids. No career aspirations, nothing. At one point I asked her why she was even going to college, wasn't it a waste of time?

I don't know, maybe I'm the problem. Maybe my Type A personality needs to learn how to be lazy and not care so much. Maybe I am actually overdoing it. Who knows, all that I know is I refuse to waste away on a couch!

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