loving community

Although I have been happy lately, overall, I tend to lose a bit of it on the weekends. Also, I tend to wake up in the morning, every day, with a small sinking feeling in my stomach--I'm not sure if it's disappointment or worry or sadness or something else entirely. The sinking usually goes away as I get out of bed and get on with my day, but it's back the next morning.

I think the problem with the weekends is that there isn't any structure--the days are too wide open, and I'm left not really knowing what to do. What I need to do, I think, is make some plans for the weekend. Give them some structure. Saturday I'll go to the park, Sunday I'll drive to Springfield, next weekend I'll go to Madison, the weekend after I'll go to St. Louis. The point is to give myself something to do on the weekends that I really enjoy, instead of just letting myself drift through them.

As for the sinking feeling in the morning, I'm not sure where this comes from, so I'm not sure what to do about it. I think it might be tied in to a feeling of loneliness. But it's not loneliness in the sense that I don't have any friends, because I do. I have wonderful friends, both here and all over the country. It's probably a combination of two things: first, I wish I had a girlfriend. I wish I was in a relationship. Second, I wish I had a small group of friends that I could hang out with regularly and do things that I like to do. I've got individual friends like this, but not really a group. Socially, I've been happiest when I've had a group like that--and I think if I did have a group like that, the relationship issue wouldn't be a big deal. Because what it boils down to is this: I want to feel loved. When I feel loved, actively, consistently, then my whole life seems brighter.

Now this isn't to say that I don't have loving friends, because I do. But I want to be surrounded by love. And this is the thing about a small group--it makes you part of a loving community. But I think that kind of love is just as hard to find as relationship love, and you just have to hope it happens.

Anyway, I actually consider these to be fairly minor things, because for the most part I'm happy with my life and my friends and my work. And now I'm off to Chicago for the day.