Home?

I'm in DC.
I'm working, approximately 8:30-6 everyday (not including commute time, which is about 10-15 mins either way)
My kitty is here.
My car is not.

I get up every morning and go to work. I spend all day with my co-workers, set in front of a computer and a phone (eek!) and responding to the every whim and need of the president and exec director of the organization, whom I am increasingly afraid live for their work.
I leave the office at 6, and get home around 6:30. I make and eat dinner, play with my cat, hope for a decent internet connection for a few minutes, and maybe watch tv. then i go to bed.

I knew the real world would be tough. I know the real world will be tough. Is tough.
I can't go about my entire existence only having contact with my coworkers, my cat, and the fellow commuters on the bus.

I miss my friends.

I miss people who appreciate being around me.

I'm really stressed out, because I can't get away from work. It follows me home, on my email and my phone. Is there really something so important that it must be accomplished right NOW, at 10pm? So important it cannot wait until 8:30 the next morning when I arrive at the office?
No one else is in their office or at their email for me to correspond with (save those few people who work from home or have blackberrys).


*pause*




I've had a full week's worth of really rough days. Yesterday though, I was on the bus home (sitting, amazingly) and this really beautiful couple got on the bus. They were just these two girls standing there, holding hands and talking in the midst of the chaos that is the evening commute in DC. I don't know who they were. I wasn't sitting next to them or anything. But seeing them, for some reason, made me feel more at home for that 5 minutes than I have felt since I arrived.

I've since realized, prompted by this internal momentary epiphany, that I don't want my work to be my life.
I'm 22, and for the first time I have the entire world before me. I'm at least moderately talented, I have a college degree, and I have a personality.
I want to have a life - to have time to take yoga classes, or to go to the grocery store. I want to come home and exhale, and be satisfied (even if just for a few hours) with the work that I did during the day.
I want to get to know people. I'd like to have friends to hang out with, and ultimately even someone else to come home to (people who live to work are never home, and therefore never can have someone to come home to).

I want to be passionate about my work, but I want my work to be work rather than my work to be my life. I'm willing to give a lot of my time to the right cause, given the opportunity to really truly use my talent and intellect, to be engaged in my job, and to experience some satisfaction and enjoyment in that work.


I have a lot of thinking to do.
Like I said, I'm really stressed out.