It is supposed to be over 100 degrees here in suburban Maryland this afternoon.

I am not leaving my apartment.

Not that this is particularly different than the last couple of weeks.  I have gotten myself into a nice routine of sleeping until 11AM, reading the news and drinking coffee until 2PM, watching some TV until dinner, and then reading until about 3AM.  I’ve managed to squeeze in going to the gym and the grocery store and even the occasional shower, but mostly I’m a lazy lazy lazy person right now.

I was talking with my mom the other weekend, and I remarked about how I was just wallowing away all my free time.  I expected some kind of rebuke, that I shouldn’t just loll around on my couch for months, but she surprised me.

“I think it’s good darling, having some time where you aren’t responsible to anyone.”

I didn’t know what to say and we just kind of moved on.  It wasn’t a big deal, but it kind of stuck with me.  As things tend to do.

I consider myself a rather lazy person.  I will avoid chores like taking out the garbage or doing laundry until the moment when I can no longer avoid them (as in, the lid to the garbage can no longer closes, or I’m out of clean underwear).  I would happily spend the rest of my life in my pajamas and never have to wear non-elastic pants again.  When someone asks if I want to “get together and do something” I think they mean “sit on a porch and smoke and talk” which is the least doing capable of something.  If I open Pinterest the day is shot.

On the other hand I have this odd internal sense of responsibility, maybe even more like duty.  I always feel that I am being negligent of a task or a commitment.  That is even while I am fulfilling a different task or commitment.  I don’t know that I have ever refused a request from someone by saying “I don’t have time right now.”  I always feel behind; in planning, grading, cooking, cleaning, decorating, writing, reading, getting to know the city I live in, learning how to knead bread, EVERYTHING.  I have a constant sense of failure not because I actually fail at things (I don’t, things tend to turn out ok for me) but because I look at everything as what I could have done if I were more organized, more dedicated, more artistic, more generous, more fearless.

I’m not one of those people who is described as “driven.”  Those people are successful; they start companies right out of college, or run for office, or “change the way we all think about this new fangled pet political cause.”  People who are “driven” aren’t surrounded by the fire hazard of 3 months worth of paper recycling and wondering how to get the comprehension questions written for each reading book without actually having to write the comprehension questions.  No, I’m more what you would call “hounded.”  Continually pursued by a sense that I’m not living up to my potential and that in doing so I am neglecting that for which I’ve been entrusted.  Driven people have lofty goals they want to achieve; hounded people can’t seem to avoid the responsibilities they didn’t (necessarily) ask for.

It’s always made me seem old.  Not mature.  Old.  I’ve never felt young, and I’ve never seemed young.  I spent years trying to “act the way I was supposed to” and be “carefree” and “enjoy my life” but what I was was miserable and an alcoholic and a complete fuck-up.  Most of the mistakes I’ve made in my life have been conscious choices to do the opposite of what I knew was right.

And I think it makes my mom a little sad that I got old so quickly.  It makes me sad sometimes too.

Now, despite all I have said here, it is too fucking hot today to do anything but sit in my AC and watch TV.

(I Year, 9 Months and 27 Days Sober)