Spreading Yourself Too Thin

Ugh... and thus, I remember Gollum. :)

Last night I met up with friends haven't seen for a quite a while, more than 10 of them. One of our friends came back from an immersion on Mandarin language, and was just passing by Hong Kong this time around before heading back for good to the Philippines. It was nice to see everybody again... We had dinner at Tony Roma's, enjoyed a full meal of mozarella sticks, onion rings (facinatingly reminding me of a Borg cube), hearty helpings of salads, ribs and fries while catching up on what's happening with each other.

At the end of the day though, I can't help but be a bit frustrated.I realized that I wasn't even able to talk to anyone enough. In fact, I wasn't even able to talk to everyone.

There's such a thing as spreading yourself too thin, just like the dinner I just had last night. So many people, so little time. And then you try to spread your time around so you at least get to talk to everyone at least once, but even if you manage to successfully pull that off, you get a sickening feeling in your stomach. 10 minute talks with each person isn't going to solidify your friendship. In fact, you end up with the feeling of being superficial. You just skimmed the surface of a chance experience. Shouldn't friends mean more than that?

I've always been envious of people who can pull it off with large crowds of people. They make it seem so effortless. Usually these guys are the leaders of the crowd; they glue each person together with a single experience. I'd love to learn to be like that-these people make a large group of people feel special in the short amount of time given, and learn to connect with each person individually at the same time. I'm more optimal on a one-on-one encounter, so I prefer meeting people individually. But trying to stay concerned, updated and have a solid friendship to each and everyone of my friends spreads me thin, just like this dinner.Its not that you're superficial... You're really concerned about what they're up to these days. You're interested. You care. But there's just not enough time to go around.

This dinner is just a microcosm of a bigger problem. How many people in the world want to do so many things in the short amount of time? I spend my days between work, going to the gym, enjoying time with my family. I want to spend time with my friends, to take a road trip to China, Egypt, England, Australia and the United States. I want to learn to sing, to play the guitar, to learn Japanese, Cantonese and speak fluent Mandarin, to be an expert on Oracle databases. My Firefox browser in the office says it all: 20 or more tabs open daily, all interesting Oracle articles, waiting to be read and digested, but never really being read. I'd begrudgingly close Firefox because I realized that all these links have been sitting around for more than 2 weeks, and never really went back to read them. Weeks pass by before meeting with friends again. Books borrowed from the library that would sit around my room until it reaches the maximum renewal limit, and realizing that I never flipped open a page.

So many things to do, so little time. Spreading yourself thin. It may not be an exact appropriate comparison, but the spirit is definitely willing, but the body is weak. It can only take so much.

There's a hint of depression there. You feel overwhelmed, but not because of the things that are forced on you by other people, but of the things forced by yourself. The things you need to do. The things that you want to do. The things that you care about. The things that will make you happy.

Its never occurred to me that I'd encounter something like this. We've all been commanded to study well, get good grades, do the right thing. Taking orders is so much easier than making them. When you realize what you want, it seems so much more easier AND harder at the same time.
Similarly, there was this past week. I’ve been coming home late almost everyday… Its not like I want to bunch everything up in one week, or come home late, but first off, there was the voice lessons on Thursday. Then there was a 5-year colleague leaving the company, so the CEO held a bash on Friday. Afterwards, on Saturday, the dinner with ex-IT colleagues whom 2 of them coincidentally came home from Shanghai and England just for this week and one will be leaving a few days after. And then there was yesterday’s dinner with my friends.

Just for those alone I’ve already occupied my evenings the past week when I could’ve done all the things I wanted to do, but can’t, because they’re more urgent/important.

So now what’s left? I’m sure a lot of people out there would say, prioritization. Goodness knows almost everyone I know would have told me that, but even with prioritization… well there’s only so much you can prioritize, right? You’d have to put up with entirely accepting the fact that a lot of those “want-to-do” items in your list would end up in the junkyard even if you lived to be 100 years old. Just seems unfair though, and the whole thing seems so wrong.

There’s not much to say, and not much that can be done. Everyone needs to hit the right balance of public and private space, without risking burning oneself out. I may just need a vacation soon, and hopefully I get to do the things I want and still read up some of the many webpages tabbed in my Firefox. Stretching yourself thin is tiring, and frustrating. Its almost like trying for quantity rather than quality, but in your mind, you desperately want both. No, there’s really no reason for me to put this entry in my blog, I have not discovered the key to effective and efficient multitasking (We’re actually much less efficient when multitasking, however you insist that we're more efficient multitasking than not.) nor have I found a way to lengthen human life spans. Its just an entry people. I dont need couselling, and I don't have any bright ideas. Just ideas :) To end this entry, I'd like to same something really quick (relative to whole entry, anyway): This entry started out with a bit of a gloom to begin with, but there’s always a “bright” side to everything.

Forget about what we want for our lives for a while. Forget about how little time we have. Forget about how much we try to make all things work much like cuckoo clocks in a clock store when time hits the hour. When you stop to think about it, just like I had, I realized that this is what it meant when they say life is a blessing. We’re actually given the choices to do all the stuff we want to do. And despite the frustration... the lack of time makes it all the more sweeter.

But first, I have got to get me a vacation. :)