What Did I Used to Do with All that Free Time?

When I started thinking the other day about what I do all day long I was taken back to the days of my youth; transported back to my teen years.  In an effort to try to find time to actually WRITE instead of just working full time as a sales & marketing manager promoting my first book (in addition to part-time editing, part-time book reviewer, and any other daily hat I may wear), I started thinking about a typical day in my life.

It suddenly hit me - I literally have no time to do anything.  And when I do find time to do stuff other than the above list my brain so resembles cleanup after a tornado that I can’t pull it together to get anything else crammed in there.  So I end up pulling back from everything instead.

Hockey games, favorite shows on DVR, I miss you so of course I’ll go to happy hour, editing writing for my critique group ends up waiting until the last minute, exploring new territory in AZ, helping people move, laundry, banking, don’t forget to use coupons, yes the printer is out of toner, ugh I forgot to write down my mileage again, you haven’t eaten lunch yet, you’re smoking too much, that pile of shit in the office should get posted on craigslist, be ready to exercise every day at 4:00, how much did we spend at the gas station, should I move money from the other account, I need to start packing to move, can I continue this career without bringing in a traditional salary and have us remain above water now that we’re buying a house, how much will a landscape crew cost, don’t skip your dentist appointment, we’ve been out of groceries for 5 days, what do you mean you’re not on pintrest, when’s the last time you created a treasury, how many books have I sold this week, what can I do to get out there more…

As you can see I’m a little frantic and could really use a break.  But I keep trying to figure it out and end up at a loss - what I need a break from I’m not really even sure.  I’d say all of it but that sounds lazy (and not my style).  I mean, I should have some responsibility as an adult.  I just wonder if it’s only me who ends up filling up to the breaking point with no release and then abandons everything in an effort to try to regain control.  Manic.

I can’t help but ask myself - What is it in my life now that causes me grave moments of stress not present in years past?

I’m old.  Old by internet standards anyway.  There weren’t even CD’s when I was a kid.  I grew up on Atari 2600, black & white Creature Double Feature on Saturday mornings, using a pen and paper in class to take notes, and we had a rotary dial phone.  We went outside to play most of the time or sat inside reading a book.  Was that just me?  I could’ve sworn everyone I knew did the same thing back then.  Tell me it wasn’t just those of us in Arlington.

My generation grew up without iPods and computers.  I spent a healthy chunk of my time writing fiction stories in a journal.  One of them is almost an entire notebook length and I didn’t feel like I was out of the loop while I was doing it.  Of course, I also wasn't selling my work back then.

These days, the pressure to network and mingle online is rampant.  You can’t swing a blog without hitting a tweet.  I probably dated myself just talking about an iPod…I’m sure there’s some new technology out already that replaces it and people reading this are shaking their heads asking what’s wrong with me being so behind the times.

We grew to embrace the internet, networking, blogging, connecting on Facebook, etc. but I keep thinking that there had to be an exchange of something in order to find the time to do all this stuff online.  Wasn’t there?  Or am I so stressed because all that life stuff is there and I added the online stuff to the mounting pile of ADD in my head?

So I ask, instead of ‘what did I used to do with all that free time?’ maybe the more appropriate question is ‘did I ever really have any free time to begin with?’

As a teenager my days were filled with yapping for countless hours on the telephone.  There were times I was told I should’ve been born with a receiver attached to my hand.  And obviously that meant I wasn’t alone in my addiction, someone had to be on the other end of the line with me.  In addition to phone calls I also found myself hanging out over friend’s houses, doing sports, exercising, going to the movies, seeing my boyfriend-du-jour, going out on a Friday night, shopping, laundry…

And all that got compounded by the world inside the monitor.  Keeping in touch has a whole new meaning today.  Writing has turned from penning cute little fiction drafts into countless emails and status updates.

So is all of this connecting, marketing, networking online and off really what my career is now?  Should I just accept the fact that dishes sit in my sink for three days, laundry piles up for weeks on end, friendships fall by the wayside, I have to spread myself so thin just to make it in today’s world?  Ugh, it’s exhausting but a Catch-22.

If you don’t stay connected no one finds your work, but if you stay connected there’s hardly time to do your work.

Some days I just want to chuck it all and disappear.  Today is one of those days.  Tomorrow I’ll probably be okay but right now the list of things to do has grown to the point of unmanageable again.  I’m tired of thinking, tired of time management, just tired.  I need a break.  I just can’t seem to figure out where to find the time to take it.

The Influence of Television

Yesterday I was over at Jim’s blog, Suldog, and he had written this great post about television and his top 5 shows of all time.  I laughed, I cried, I did all the usual things I do when reading one of his posts (including but not limited to: snorting, dropping my jaw in surprise, cackling hysterically, marveling in the way he can spin something small like TV shows into something so well written).

As I was commenting back I realized I’d already typed about 200 words and decided instead that it would make for a good post of my own.  So in piggybacking my own drivel off Jim’s much better written content, here’s a list of my top five favorite television shows and a little description of why based on his rules:

You…

1. Watch every episode

2. Love reruns

3. Can name every actor who graced the screen

4. Have favorite episode(s)

5. Still enjoy even if it jumps the shark

6. Tell your friends to watch

7. Can identify when parts have been cut in reruns

8. Smile and/or laugh just thinking about the show

9. Wouldn’t mind a reunion

10. Find yourself quoting the show all the time

11. Feel the show would hold up through generations

And finally, that the series has come to an end.

With all of that in mind (which I think are a fine set of rules by the way), I’d have to go with:

Sex and the City

Not only have I watched every episode numerous times I own the super girlie, pink velvet boxed DVD set and still watch when it’s on regular TV, just because.  Quoting this show is like part of my personal lexicon, in fact at times I probably do it without even realizing.  There were so many perfectly timed moments, scenarios of friendship, love and sex in the modern day that entire urban phrases were created due to this show.  Ever call someone a Modelizer (a man who only dates models) or a Frenemy (so much a word that MSWord recognizes the spelling)?  Ever refer to the cheating curve?  Ever tell someone they’ve Susan Sharon’d something?  Curious where Bradley Cooper or Dean Winters got their start?  And oh yes you know Dean, he plays Mayhem in those trendy Allstate commercials now.  SATC streamlined so much of pop culture and made the bold move of showing the world just what women were capable of.  Even if they ‘lost their Choo!’ while doing it.  The one caveat here is that there was already a reunion of sorts, 2 movies have been made since the series ended.  I was so disappointed with shifting characters that were Hollywood-ized for big screen appeal in the first movie that I never saw the second and I pretty much pretend they were never even made.

Friends

This one is truly era/generational specific for GenX I think.  As this show aired I was moving into my own apartments and starting to realize what it was like to live and love on my own for the first time, just like the cast.  I discovered how much of a family my own friends really were.  I don’t have to tell my friends to watch though, most of them already own the box set and have all 10 seasons looped on constant rotation.  I’d just like to point out that no one told me life was gonna be this way…

Get Smart / Inspector Gadget (yes the cartoon, because these two are basically the same show)

Okay truthfully I can’t say for sure if I’ve ever seen every episode of Get Smart or if I could quote it on cue, but let me just say that during my nightly bouts with insomnia when I was a teenager I would stay up until 1:00 in the morning most nights just to catch the reruns on Boston channel 38 (I think, might have been 56).  The guy had a shoe phone.  Does it really get much cooler than that?  Also, 99 was really the brains behind the operation and I thought she was super crafty.  As far as Inspector Gadget goes it was essentially the cartoon version of Get Smart so what wasn’t to love?!  I was never really into cartoons but a bumbling fool who has a helicopter hat to get out of tough situations was too cool.  Plus Penny & Brain (the dog) actually solved the crimes (seeing a pattern here?).  I’m quite sure this is the reason I instantly fell in love with the character of Data when The Goonies came out in 1985.

Golden Girls

This is on the list because I’ve recently started watching reruns of this show again and I can’t believe for even an instant that any of my family would have let me watch it when it first came out.  Talk about racy!  Luckily I was only about 12 when it first aired and had no clue what they were talking about.  Of course that all changed as years went on and I loved all of their spunky attitudes and sharp tongues.  Those gals are who I aspire to be when I’m in my 60’s – smart, funny, out of control and still self-proclaimed sexy (okay so I aspire to be Blanche but will likely end up much more Dorothy).  Wait a second, 4 gals living in the same town, dating and generally waxing on about life and relationships?  Sensing a pattern here?  Plus there was Betty White.  And even after not watching it for decades I could still sing the entire theme song from memory.  What’s not to love?  I don’t quote it yet but I guarantee this will end up in the quote rolodex in the near future.

Lost

Conspiracy theories.  Unanswered questions.  More frustrating plot twists than characters on the show.  “Live together, die alone.”  “You’re gonna die , Charlie.”  “See ya in another life brotha.”  “Freckles.”  “The Others.”  Oh yeah, and there was that time when the Mega Millions was huge right after the end of the series’ run and Matt was picking up tickets.  I told him to play 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42 (yes I just typed that from memory, if you’re a Lostie you could too).  Apparently lots of people played those numbers.  And we all won a couple hundred bucks.  Hurley won 150 million playing them on the show but who’s complaining?  We got back our investment 150 times over.  The writing was smart and those bastards kept us guessing until the very end…and beyond.  And of course after my Vampire post you pretty much know how I felt about Boone.  Someone get me a drool bucket would ya?

The one show I didn’t include, and I’m sure many are surprised, is Moonlighting.  I loved that show.  No wait, I love, love, looooooovvvvvvved that show!  Right up until Maddie and David slept together.  In the 80’s no one knew how to write so that there was still tension after the sexual tension dissipated and the show went downhill fast.  But EVERYone was on that show, Whoopie Goldberg, Judd Nelson, Pierce Brosnan and of course, Mark Harmon (who they should have kept around as Maddie’s love interest longer, just sayin’).  I loved that they talked right into the camera, something I still enjoy to this day (brought to even greater heights with movies such as Ferris Bueller) and the rhyming scripts were classic.  But there’s no such thing as reruns and I pretty much wouldn’t watch the last season again so it wouldn’t have been fair to include this one.  It broke the rules.

So do you have favorites?  Shows that cross the great divide of generations and can still tug at you like they did when they were first aired?

A Shout Out to My Aunt Sue

A long, long time ago, my Aunt Sue took me to my first hockey game.  I wish that I could say I remembered the actual experience, that specific game itself or the overwhelming largeness I likely felt as such a small girl in a crowd of close to 17,000 people, but I don’t.  I wish I could say that I still had the ticket stub or that I could share a picture of the two of us together on that day, but I can’t.  What I can safely say though is that game was the start of my love of a certain sport and a true sense of bonding between my Aunt and I that has lasted for decades.

Why am I telling this story right now?  Well, as you know I received my proof copy of my book a few weeks ago and gave it the thumbs up.  I ordered a stack of copies, signed and packed them up. Smiling, I sent them out the door, excited for the recipients to get them.  And then it hit me like a ton of bricks. 

I didn’t specifically thank my Aunt for her inspiration and infectious enthusiasm for the Bruins.  I didn’t thank her for taking me to that very first game.  I didn’t thank her in the acknowledgements page for all the games we attended together since then; for the countless hours of talking all things black and gold.

And that is a downright huge fuck up on my part.  Because the truth is that my Aunt Sue was, and still is, one of the largest inspirations for me and why I felt compelled to tell Sara’s story in the first place.  She is the original hockey fan!  The original Boston girl, lover of all sports!

Sue was there when I found the perfect parking spot on Friend Street the night I did the research as we entered through the West Entrance of The Garden, something integral that made it into the book.  And the photo at the bottom of this post was taken that night.

Sue and I sat in one or the other of our cars together (in the other perfect parking spots that we got numerous times after that) until six o’clock when we could plug the meter in order to avoid possibility of a ticket.  We’d chat and laugh and just catch up on our lives during those times.  And I have to say it’s one of the things I miss the most about not being able to go to games together now that I moved out here to Arizona.

Sue and I shared a once in a lifetime kind of moment in 2011 when we sat in the second to last row of The Garden as the Bruins swept the Philadelphia Flyers in game 4 of the playoffs on their road to the Cup.  And then we, of course, went to the Cup parade when they won it all!

Sue answered my countless questions about the new rules after the most recent NHL lockout.  She also answered my countless questions on game play when I got back into the game after many years of not watching hockey.

Sue and I for the past few seasons have live-chatted almost every Bruins game and sometimes even had the chance to get together and have dinner at her house or ours to watch the ones we didn’t have the fortune of attending.  When we were back in Boston last November we went to a game together.  By chance the Bruins were here playing the Coyotes last December and we planned her visit to Phoenix around going to the game together.

Where was all of this in my head when I was writing out that page?  I can only hope she understands how much I’ve enjoyed all our time together and how much her love of this game of luck and skill inspired a character in my imagination.  I can only hope she understands how much it means to me.

Thank you Sue, if it wasn’t for your inspiration and friendship along the way of this journey this book never could have been.  I love you ♥