Table for One

I need to make a confession.  I eat out and go to movies all the time...alone.  And you know what?  I freaking love it.  I mean, potentially awesome food and a potentially equally awesome movie, without having to put up with a lot of vapid conversation?  Sign me up every time, man.  Which is not to say that I'm against going to do stuff with people, just...I guess every once in a while I prefer to be alone; and it turns out that I'm never really opposed to being alone at any while (side note: if you can say once in a while, why can't you specify other "whiles"?  Seems kind of unnecessarily discriminatory to non-specific periods of time).

Here's a story to illustrate my solitary point: a few years ago I was kicked out of the apartment I was renting; I won't get into it too much, cause it's actually a long story and I don't want to type that much about something that angers me.  (That's your cue to say, "Isn't that sort of every topic you've written about so far, and are most likely to continue writing about, in this useless blog of yours?"  To which I would respond: "...Shut up").  Basically, my car broke down on the move there, I spent all of my money repairing it and didn't have any for rent.  The manager was okay with it for a while, but then rather randomly kicked me out, despite the fact that I was keeping up with the payment schedule that he came up with; ;turns out his son wanted my room, and he never brought the contract over for me to sign.  So..I was basically up a certain creek full of excrement without the necessary equipment to propel my water-craft.  I had yet to find a job, so I had no money for a down payment/security deposit/first and last months' rent/food.  I was, however, lucky enough to have a friend - who was also the drummer in our band - that had just built a bunch of powered, climate-controlled practice spaces that he rented out to other bands.  And as luck would have, one of them was (perpetually) empty; he let me crash there for free until I could get back on my feet.  That's basically what happened; now for the interesting part.  Well, okay none of it is actually going to be interesting to anyone but me, but whatever.

I lived in that tiny, windowless, carpeted room sleeping on the floor, selling plasma for food, and being asleep for about fifteen hours a day.  My point is, is rarely saw the sun and never really saw another person more than once a week.  And you know what?  I mostly loved it.  I mean, sure the whole "not having money, a job, food that didn't come from a can, or heat in the middle of a frozen Utah winter"  sucked (turns out the AC worked, but not the heat.  That's okay, I just wore like twenty layers of clothes...and was still pretty cold.  Whatever); and eventually I realized I had become sort of depressed (I guess; I'm not really qualified to diagnose it.  I might have just been malnourished; I mean, two months of cheeze-its, flaming hot cheetohs, Nalley chili and rice can be lethal to your wellness.  By the way, I hate that word; "wellness?"  I can't stand the fact that it's become acceptable in the English language to just add "-ness" to the end of a word.  Its absolute crapness.  Actually, scratch that; I kind of like it.  But my point was/is, as far as the whole "not interacting with anyone" was concerned (aside from the occasional band practice...which happened to be in another room of the same practice unit/building/thing), I was actually rather enjoying it.  Actually, the worst part was not having anywhere to shower on a daily basis.  I mean, I would try to wash off what I could in the sink, but just like there was no heat there was also no hot water, so...anyways, I showered at friends places when I could, but I still felt a lot like what Brad Pitt's in between-films hobo beard looks like. 

All of this is to set up something that happened yesterday: half of my roommates were out of town, and the other half were going to move out in the afternoon; and since no one was coming back until afternoon of the next day, I was going to be completely alone for almost an entire day.  No one popping in at 4 in the afternoon and wanting to chat while I'm watching old Michael Jordan basketball games, no one doing the dishes while I'm trying to watch Community, no roommate going to sleep at 9 pm when I don't usually sleep until 5 am - which of course means no access to any of my stuff for about 8 hours.  Basically, I could be entirely...utterly...totally...other words to express a measure of complete-itude that I haven't used yet...alone.  And after four straight months of uninterrupted human contact, this rather solitary dude was looking forward to not having to see anyone if he didn't really want to; and you were going to wager on it, I'd take the under on "want to".  But then 5 pm rolled around, and my last roommate had yet to leave; and I started getting a little irritated.  I mean, I had already found a new place, he was required to have moved out by...two hours earlier; and he had already moved most of his stuff out.  All he had left was his food, he'd already transferred his bedding...so from what I could tell, he had about ten minutes of work before I was all alone.  My first cause for concern was when he started baking a cake.  Who goes back to their old place and bakes a cake when they don't have to?  Then he came back after delivering the cake, cleaned some dishes, went to eat some food, came back again...and suddenly it was ten o'clock - an hour past his usual bed time - and he was moving his bedding back in, 'cause he was staying for the night.  I was absolutely irate.  Then I found out that he hadn't gotten into the new place and had no where else to go (don't worry he found a new place this morning; but by then everyone else had come back).  So I wasn't nearly as mad, but I was still really disappointed to have lost that day of awesome loneliness.  Oh well, some things are more important i guess...but I mean, I was homeless for a while so he could have managed, right?  Whatever.  I guess the point of this is...just...leave me alone?  I don't know, go ahead and find something else to waste your companies expensive time with.