Me Time

I was just telling my coworkers yesterday that I’m always coming up with ideas, and then finding out that someone else just did it.

• My title for a food blog
• My name and idea for a dog seatbelt
• My idea for a public health website (Mine would have been called micromending.org. Hi, Johnny Tucks!)
• And, now, my latest idea for a blog topic

Dumb.

Being alone scares a lot of people. You start talking to yourself, dinners come out of a can, you begin lurking on acquaintances’ Facebook pages and mentally high-fiving that awkward girl that somehow got it together and is doing really well with her good-looking husband and new baby. It’s scary.

But it’s also Me Time. You let your neuroticism get out of control, and no one is there to judge. I read aloud in a British accent because it sounds nice. But then I'll have read pages that way, and forgot to actually pay attention to what I read, so I always end up going back and rereading. Or I don’t pick up the hair I shed on my bathroom floor for days. My hair is long, and I shed a lot—it’s pretty gross. And I go on cleaning binges. I’ve crawled across my cream-colored carpeted floor, picking up individual hairs. Again, I shed a lot. And I’ve been doing the carpet thing since high school. I also like to draw without my glasses or contacts and then look at what I created. Someone might think I have schizophrenia if they looked at those pictures.

I surveyed my friends with the same question, and this is why I love them:

• SAK: Power ballads--I am like, who is that, Beyonce or me singing? Facemask time, plucking those unsightly hairs you don't want anyone to know you have. And I walk around in my heels to see if I look sexier in them, usually in my underwear, or I put on my favorite ones I don't get to wear that much.
• LR: Apply dramatic makeup that I would never wear in the outside world in a million years. I go way overboard--total tranny. Especially with the eyeliner--a Persian tranny.
• CD: Video games where I kill people. Yes, killing. In the past, clean my shoes with an old toothbrush.
• NS: Vegging out and reading a book, or just vegging out, period. And secret McDonald’s and ice cream dinners. Oh, and watching mindless and trashy rom coms.
• MS: Oh God, so many things. Watch rom coms, put on my zit cream, eat a roll of cookie dough, and maybe listen to David Gray and cry. And I drink wine out of the bottle and put on my cow shaped slippers.
• NF: I talk to my dog, wear my lesbian socks, and tight pants.
• ML: Farting unapologetically and eating Nutella out of the jar with my fingers (but I do that with K too).
• RL: Talking to the tv—“oh snap, no you didn't!", air drum—hardcore style, and I use the bathroom with the door open. (M: he does that anyways)
• BT: I make weird faces in the mirror to try and make a face that doesn't look like me anymore, but not in a silly way, just naturally a different person. I find that drastically different lip-formations can really change who you are.

I wouldn’t give up Me Time for anything. It makes me who I am. And as my wise and beautiful sister-friend, Sabiha, said, “If you can learn to be happy and content alone and doing your own thing, you can def be happier with someone else.”