i am a waste of space

<---- me.....except that's a cat, and i'm a person.

I'm sitting here by myself on the couch on a Saturday, and I'm realizing, as I often do, what a giant waste of space I am. Granted, weekends are meant for relaxing. Since I spend so many of my weekends traveling up to Maryland, or spending time with Meg when she comes down to Raleigh, it's nice to have a quiet weekend once in a while when I don't have to do anything. The problem is that I actually don't do anything. I always tell myself I'm going to be productive and get some things accomplished that I never have time to work on during the week or over the non-free weekends, but it never happens. Part of it is that I'm just a typical lazy American. Nothing I can do about that. I'm wired to be lazy, and I'll use that bad excuse until the day I die. But there's more to it that I can't quite put my finger on. Begin unnecessary new paragraph:

I'd like to get some cleaning done, or wash my car, or maybe go running or go to the gym. I also have a lot of things for work that I would like to spend time on. That sounds pretty dumb for a weekend activity, but I don't think it's that weird. In my job I end up being a guy that has to answer a lot of questions from a lot of people. That's not because I'm any smarter or more important than anyone else. I'm definitely not. It's just because the work I do on our product gets used by almost everyone else on the team. I'm not going to attempt to explain my job because I have failed in every attempt I've ever made to do that, and I will just confuse you because I'm terrible at explaining things. The point I'm getting to is that an excessively large portion of my work days is spent answering all the questions and trying to help people with problems. I wouldn't mind so much, except that it keeps me from doing the actual work I want and need to be doing. We talk about a lot of cool things we want to do at work, but we never have time to work on them because of all the interruptions and unexpected issues, and it's frustrating. I hate leaving work completely burnt out, yet having nothing tangible to show for my hard work that day. That would be my biggest complaint about my job.

So that's why I say I want to be doing things for work on the weekend, rather than wasting the days away like I usually do. I would even have fun working on that stuff, as nerdy as they might be. I can't pretend I'm not a giant nerd. But when you always leave work tired, stressed, and burnt out, you don't want to think about work anymore when you're at home. That's my one explanation for why I have so much trouble motivating myself. I still think I have motivation problems for other reasons, though. I just don't know what they are. I hate the feeling of having wasted time when I could have been doing so many other, more useful, things. I hate the feeling so much that you would think it would cause me to not do it anymore, but it doesn't. Maybe it's normal, I don't know. But I hate it.

I don't really know where I'm going with this. It was just on my mind. Hopefully I'll figure it out one day and feel less bad about myself. I'll have to figure it out one day. I'll have a house and a family and responsibilities coming out my butt, and I won't have time to waste time anymore. Maybe I should enjoy it while my life still allows me to. But the day I can't afford to waste time anymore is also the day I can't spend as much of my time doing things just because I want to. That's a scary thought.

Somehow it's after 5:00 already. Time to go eat, do laundry, and finish watching USC vs. Notre Dame. Notre Dame is up 21-14 right now. I hate Notre Dame, but not as much as I would love seeing USC lose, so I have to root for them today. Maybe while I watch I'll try to figure out what the hell to do with myself for the rest of the weekend. I have to go to a bar to watch the Redskins game tomorrow, since the stupid #$%@#%! Panthers are playing at the same time and taking up the TV slot. I expect everyone to be rooting for Joe Gibbs tomorrow. I know you won't let me down. Everyone enjoy your weekend. I'll try to be less reflective and depressing next time.