Truly, my capacity for puttering around my apartment seems endless. February and March 2004 are going to be marked at the Months of Puttering. Sunday is drawing to a close and once again I've spent two days inside tidying up, reading and being general antisocial. I did leave briefly to go downstairs and pick up my mail and that was only because I knew I had Netflix movies waiting for me. Katusha will totally relate to this.

What's worse is that I'm generally pretty content about the state of my weekends. Downright happy about it. Fridays roll around and like everyone in the world I think about my weekend ahead...and truly nothing makes me happier than to have the next two days lay ahead of me with nothing planned, no one to see, no where to go. Where I know I can just shut my door, nestle inside and be cocooned for two solid days. Is that sad? Something to be concerned about?

It's not like I'm laying in bed drooling (okay, so I did that for a while) or watching bad TV informercials for a "6 Second Ab Machine" (okay, I did that too), I mean I'm cleaning, organizing, talking on the phone, reading, knitting -- doing stuff, it's just that it all seems to take me two straight days without leaving the building at all.

I don't think its about poor time management either. It's not that I'm unorganized -- as I mentioned, I spend two straight days getting organized --it's that I just don't have much of a desire to get out. So am I just lazy? Bored? Depressed? A victim of social anxiety? Maybe all -- or none -- of the above. To be certain, there is an element of apathy and disfunction required to nurture this type of behavior -- I just don't care about going out. It's not a priority, it's not particularly fun for me. When I am out at a bar or club I just feel removed and out of touch, as though I'm invading someone else's high school reunion. Maybe I'm just in a (really long) phase of my life where I need to be alone. Maybe I just enjoy solitude.

I have friends that are extraordinarily active (which isn't hard, compared to me), who go out 5, 6 nights a week. To whom a night in is the exception rather than the rule and for whom that one night in is usually just to do laundry to prepare for the week ahead. They're drinking at hip bars and going to shows until 2 in the morning on a weeknight, going to gallery openings and film retrospectives and living the Carrie Bradshaw life. And I sometimes wish my life was more like that -- it seems wasteful to be this young and this urban and to spend my weekends inside all day and all night. The alternative just doesn't feel right to me though, it feels more like work. Like you're working two jobs where one is your day job and the other is your night job which involves every bit as much preparation and coordination and relationship building and image management.

I didn't used to be like this, either. I used to make a point to go out every day, even if just to walk around Target for hours on end. Looking back though, it can argued that's how I got into credit card debt -- the hours of wandering through stores/restaurants/bars for lack of something better to do.

I'm overthinking. The night is young. There's more puttering to do while I have the chance.