Kick the Habit

I am trying to form new habits.
And that is the topside spin I am going to put on this.
I am not breaking old habits, I am forming new habits.
Albeit, ones that are intended to fill up the space left by the old habits that are no more.

Habits like talking to J. every morning - all the way to work (I have a great cell phone plan.) Every day. All the way to work. Traffic jams and all. Even though I would have just seen him or talked to him the night before.

So I am re-acquainting myself with the local radio stations. The ones to avoid (Sorry, Celine!) and the ones to program into my buttons (Hello, Killers!) I feel sort of silly wearing my earpiece without the distinct possibility of a phone call- but I wear it anyway, because I drive a stick shift car and who needs to be fiddling with that thing on the fly if the phone should unexpectedly ring while I am merging or breaking for the Zoo Balloon crowd?

My evenings have become very productive...and oddly, a little broader socially. Since I am not yakking the night away on the phone, I am doing things I avoided doing, because I could not do them while holding a phone to my head. Like stripping my kitchen floor, and changing light bulbs, and spackling and painting the holes my son put in his wall hanging and rehanging a poster of Santana Moss.

And at the behest of my college roommate, Jane, and in exchange for her commitment to attend our (gasp!) 25th reunion with me, I am connecting with old friends on Facebook.

Facebook - I am finding it to be like a giant cocktail party. Only you can hear all of the conversations at once. And join the ones you want to join, and avoid the ones you'd sooner set yourself on fire than participate in. So you flit from conversation to conversation fairly effortlessly, and without having to get dressed up or worry about little bits of tapenade in your teeth.

Question - Does everyone find it annoying when work people try to friend them? If we were supposed to be FB friends, wouldn't it stand to reason that we'd already have more than a "Heyhowzitgoing?" thing going at the office where we sit 10 feet apart for 40 to 50 hours a week and don't ever think to go out for drinks in person?

And my mother's family! Why are they friending me?

People! You were not invited to my wedding! If I didn't include you in the most momentous day in my life, why on Earth would I want to give you access to my every day life?

Did my mother put you up to this?

Anyway, I am quietly adjusting to life without J. It is an alternate universe for the moment. And sometimes a little lonely.

But maybe lonely isn't such a bad thing for right now. I am willing to believe that if necessity is the mother of all invention, then solitude laced with loneliness must be the mother of something pretty decent too.

What that is exactly remains to be seen.