Brain Dead

Oh, oh.  I think I have reached the limit to my socialization levels this is not a good thing right now.  You see soon the shack and other nearby familial dwellings will be over run by all types of family.  It will be a family reunion of epic proportions where every single living member of the "real family" and their families will be present...for one partial day.  Most everyone will be here for around a week with people flying in on random days but the entire clan will only actually be all together for part of one day.  And I am truly looking forward to it...but...

You see I do not mind socializing, in fact when it comes to hanging with the family I love it, but before that I really need some "alone time" a good long stretch of it.  If I don't get some time to myself I start to get owly, distracted, annoyed, tired, irritated, sad, agitated, nervous, restless, disturbed, stressed, frazzled, discombobulated, anxious, and jittery.  I've always been like that even as a small child.  I think it had something to do with the fact that I grew up in a family of seven people and privacy and alone time was a premium that rarely ever occurred.  You cannot even imagine as a kid how wonderful a feeling it used to be to come home to an empty house.  It was like xmas and Halloween all rolled into one package.  That feeling has never left me. 

Being by myself allows me to regroup and recharge my batteries.  Mostly when I'm alone I like to just putz around and do not much of anything, but if I'm alone for a long stretch then after a day or two of just humming quietly to myself I start to tackle jobs that I've been putting off for awhile, or I will rearrange a cupboard, or a room, or I start organizing things, or I will go out into the bush and snip, chop, or saw something.  By the end of my stint most everything that I've been putting off finally gets done.  It is most satisfying.  And I feel relaxed, regenerated, and happy.  Then I look forward to having people around me and miss everyone. 

Unfortunately the complete opposite starts to happen when I have been around people nonstop for days on end.  Soon I stop doing stuff, I put things off, my mind and body becomes unwilling to do even the most menial of tasks.  I start getting tense and jittery and feeling cornered and every suggestion seems like someone is trying to control my life.  And if there is one thing in this life that I hate with a capital H, that is someone trying to control me and my actions.  I'm not good at it.  I start planning methods of escape and start thinking that Greenland would be a good place to live. 

So in order to prevent having my house look like a small but destructive tornado hit it, and to avoid becoming a citizen of Greenland I think I will make a concerted effort in the next week to find some quiet space to stop and reflect all by my onesies.  That way when all the brothers, wives, and various offspring arrive they will not find me lying around in five day old pajamas and drooling into my coffee.  It's just not a good look for me.