6 weeks.

I finally cleaned up that pile of clothes that has been sitting on my floor since December. That gigantic pile that started off as Good Will and slowly came to hold laundry and clean clothes the same, but just beckoned me to clean it up or no one would come over and share my room. I also cleaned off the couch in the living room. I did all my dishes. I watched Heroes. I’ve adjusted to my Mondays off, I haven’t budged from that notion. I don’t answer my phone, I don’t open my computer and hope that the internet might kick in. Then it happened, the end of Heroes. Returning April 23 and my heart dropped.

I’ve come to hinge on that crutch so that everyone in my life leaves me alone for just one night. My days, my nights, my weekends and my holidays are confronted with friends and family begging for every minute of my free time and for once a week, that time was just for me and a bottle of wine – not them, not that pile of laundry, not the dishes. As soon as the words hit the screen my phone buzzed with three new text messages, “We have our Mondays back for a couple weeks!” Oh, yeah.

I almost wished I didn’t clean, I might be able to pull off one Monday for laundry, one for dishes before I was forced into another four hour block dedicated to my life around me.

Before you comment that I should just say no, let me mention that I’ve made certain strides in myself the last couple of weeks. I’ve decided that you can’t live and breathe a job, because as an old boss told me before he left – “You may view a job as a family so you feel you can’t leave, but that job isn’t family – it’ll leave you the minute it can’t afford you.” More like a boyfriend I guess, but I digress.

The last year (officially next week, wa-hoo), I have lived and breathed, dedicating my free time to networking events, socializing with people in the mix, talking to students about why the industry is just so great, and I’ve put off the other things (aka family and friends) to that little bit of free time that I struggle to give myself. But I have decided, upon my one year, that work doesn’t get that side of me all the time, they’ll get two events a week, that’s either lunch or dinner. Otherwise lunch or dinner time goes to me, to the gym, to my friends and to my family. So that way next time Heroes tells me that I’ll have to wait 6 weeks to see it I won’t have a desperate moment of searching – I’ll have an oh-sad moment, because I like the show so much.