November and December are busy months. Not just for me, but for most people I know. Family & social gatherings for the holidays are most of the reason — at least for us. We tend to try to pack things in before the rush of the holiday season sets in — and sometimes end up with more than we can handle.

We’d been meaning to have a small dinner party for some neighbors and I put it off until November for no reason than laziness. That’s planned for this coming Saturday. Then we were invited for dinner at another neighbor’s house on Sunday. Then we got an invitation to a small gathering of parents of wrestlers for Friday. The next day we received another invitation to a combined meeting & dinner party with the wrestling coaches and parents of the entire team for Saturday.

1 weekend, 4 dinner party invitations. And we’re doing them all. At least Dean will be doing them all. I’m not going to the party on Saturday because I’ll be cooking paella for my neighbors. Dean will simply show up here late.

I discovered this weekend (but really knew this already) that I really need to socialize [offline] more often. I’d been in a funk for a while — sometimes not leaving the house for days. I’d get up, turn on the computer, work / play / work /maybe shower/ play /work / play on the computer until it was time to make dinner. When Dean got home I had little to say and often would return to the computer for more work / play / work before going to bed. I’d do this all week and even some weekends. I’m not sure it is actually laziness — more like inertia.

This Saturday, after attending BarCampDC, I felt like a new person. It wasn’t just the sessions I attended, but being around people. On Sunday I went to a local Unitarian church with a friend. While I may not go back to that church,  I enjoyed the day. They were very welcoming. I’m not really looking for a church, but this might do if and when I do decide to attend a church regularly. I was around people again.

I had a hard time settling down to do work yesterday afternoon — I have a lot of deadlines to meet this week. Part of the reason was that the weather — 70 degrees in November — was amazing. But another part was the solitude. I felt lonely — something that I’d not felt in a long time, at least not that I recognized.

So, I’m glad that we have a lot of activities coming up — this food packed weekend, then Thanksgiving weekend, then work parties, book groups, Christmas. Maybe a resolution should be to be more social in an off-line kind of way. Hopefully the good kind of inertia has taken hold.