Slowing down

So for the past 3 months and 5 days I have been doing everything humanly possible to fill up my days with STUFF to do. It didn't even really matter what, just so long as there was a plan. Granted I wasn't doing very well with that until about 2 months ago, but since then I've kept my weekends full and busy (mostly with driving down to Rochester) and my weeknights at least somewhat full.

I was doing this by going out with friends (Sybylla and Vicki, Hannah, Liisa Julie and Andy), hanging out with family, doing chores (my room has been cleaner these past 3 months than at any other time in my life I'm pretty sure), and playing with/attempting to train my new rats. While that sounds like enough to have kept me well occupied - it wasn't. So I started seeing someone (when I finally got to see Iron Man 2, that was our first date). Our first date also happened to be exactly one month after Tom broke up with me. Unfortunately, as you may have gathered via reading these posts, I was not dealing with the break up well (no shit right?).

So the rest of my "free" time, the time I had not doing the aforementioned activities, was filled up by hanging out with (dating I guess) Nathan. He is really sweet, caring, affectionate, and overall a great guy. I haven't mentioned him because I should not have been dating him. I think I started dating him both to fill up my spare time and to try to get over Tom. It didn't work. I mean I guess the busy aspect kept my mind off him for awhile, but I was not dating Nathan for the right reasons. I kind of knew it all along, but I guess I was hoping things would change.

Anyway, I ended up dating Nathan for almost 2 months. I finally realized that I was really not ready for a full-on relationship a week ago today, and ended it. Of course, soon after I realized how much I was giving up - no more cuddles, no one to boost my ego when I was feeling down, no one to fill up my empty time slots on the calendar. It was the right thing to do, I mean I was pretty much just using him to make my own life a little less depressed. But still, it's hard to let go of things that make you happy.

Point of this post is really to fess up to that. But I suppose I could also relate what's happened since Thursday.

My life is starting to slow down (hence the title of this post). Without that automatic if-I've-got-nothing-to-do-call-Nathan, I've found I have too much spare time. It's strange because it's pretty much how my life had always been prior to moving to Minneapolis. I always had tons of spare time and usually filled it up watching TV, movies, or playing around on the internet. Once I moved here, I spent about a month moving in, buying a new computer, getting used to my new job and public transportation, etc. so all of that kept me relatively busy. Then of course I was dating Tom for 5 months and 3 days. And that meant that, like Nathan only moreso, every spare second (and a lot of non-spare seconds) was spent in his company. For a month after he dumped me, I don't even know what I did other than spend copious amounts of time with my family and learning how to consume alcohol. I guess those would be the dark days when I forgot how to eat and subsequently lost 20 lbs, but I digress. Then for the past 2 months I've had Nathan.

So now, I guess I just don't know what to do with myself. On Thursday night I watched most of Season 5 of Lost. On Friday night I did nothing but laundry and played games online.

On Saturday I did get up relatively early (7am - was supposed to get up at 5) and drove over to Red Wing to meet my dad to go fishing. I caught one tiny little shad (minnow) and then we went back in ~noon to pick up mom, Sara, and Belle. Drove around on the Mississippi River on the boat, watched Belle get some air as we went over waves, and then parked out in the middle to eat lunch and throw balls for Belle to fetch. After we were done playing, she figured out how to chuck the ball in the water by herself and then leap in after it. It was pretty funny, but annoying because she couldn't pull herself back into the boat without a lot of assistance. We then drove over to a fishing spot and stayed there for awhile longer (I caught two more fish - both sheephead = non eaters but still something to do!). We eventually drove back to the dock and parted ways. I drove back home (about an hours drive) and then, yet again, nothing. Pretty sure the sun wiped me out a bit because I'm sure there was some napping involved but other than that a lot of Lost-watching and game-playing. A pretty cool storm blew through that afternoon/evening, lots of lightning but luckily no damage in my neighborhood.

On Sunday I went in to work for about an hour to dose animals with their drug and then spent the rest of the day doing NOTHING. I popped in some Gilmore Girls and watched many episodes of that while messing around online, did another small load of laundry, and ate food. Ended up staying up until 2am this morning talking to people online but seriously I'm not sure I can handle this lack of things to do.

It's making me want to go out and date someone, but that's the wrong move. It's just so much easier to make plans if you have a someone to always make plans with. I want to stay busy, to stay active (since my non-eating weight loss I've actually managed to cut out a couple more pounds via exercise, yay endorphin highs), but I'm afraid that if I have more days like yesterday I'll become the slug I was, glued to the keyboard/remote and unhappy with life but too lazy to do anything about it.

Sometimes I think I need to just find some people to date casually - no emotional commitment, just hanging out and having fun and meeting new people. Sometimes I feel like my best course is to find a job away from the cities, to move away and start fresh (then at least I have a reason for why I'm not with Tom anymore). Then at yet other times I feel like I need to find my soul mate (if such a thing exists) who will make me forget about my heartache, who will be perfectly suited to me, my life, my goals and my dreams, and everything will turn out happily ever after.

What I really should do is start planning for Colorado - figure out where we'll go and what we'll do and start packing accordingly. Apparently I need to get a new swim suit because mine are too small for me now (yay?).

I also need to start studying for the GRE and take that before my brain completely deteriorates.

So this has been a weird post, but today is a really REALLY slow work day and it's been on my mind a lot (the whole, boredom thing I was experiencing all day yesterday).

I suppose this is why I call my mind the maelstrom - you just never really know what's going to come out of the madness.