Interesting

Do I make y’all feel depressed?  Sometimes I worry about telling too much truth in real time.  As though I were my own reality show. 

Someone I once knew told me that the problem with me is that I just wasn’t very interesting.  I don’t know how to answer that exactly.  It is true that I don’t cultivate new hobbies very often. I don’t really have much free time.  When I am free I tend to hibernate in my bedroom only coming out to go on walks, when my guilt over neglecting so many dogs overwhelms me.  I’m pretty happy alone in my room, though.  I barricade myself into my bed with at least one journal, two works of current fiction, some catalogs, and a kindle.  Occasionally I make popcorn.  And I don’t see any reason to come out.  I have everything I need within arm’s reach.

I also haven’t ever mastered the hobbies I took on previously.  I still struggle with running more than a mile uninterrupted.  I haven’t finished decorating my house.  I don’t have a single dog (or child) who could be considered well-trained.  Even though I have read all the dog and child-training books.  I could start riding again, but I don’t currently have a horse.

And I’m just not going to ride motorcycles or knit.  I can’t really build things and I don’t wish to write poetry.  I don’t enjoy yard work.  All my flowers die.  Rescuing animals is a hobby you can max out on pretty quickly.  Learning to effectively manage my finances doesn’t sound like a fun Saturday activity.  Tennis might be a possibility, but I am not competitive, and those tennis ladies are kind of scary.  I have seen people less addicted to crack cocaine than they are to playing tennis.  But they do have pretty legs…

Hobbies and single-working-motherhood just don’t really go together.  Maybe being interesting and single-working-motherhood don’t go together. 

Which is why I have settled for being present and somewhat engaged instead of interesting.  I don’t really think my children want me to be interesting.  They like for me to be predictable.  Predictably picking them up from school; predictably insisting on baths and brushing teeth; predictably serving meals; predictably saying no to almost everything they ask.

I guess writing this online journal is a hobby that I enjoy.  I don’t know if it makes me interesting, except in that way where you might knit your eyebrows and say “it’s interesting that she is willing to admit to that…”