time management

[metaphortunate]

Before oursin pointed it out, it had not occurred to me to marvel at fictional characters who:

...have time to have affairs: their jobs and other commitments are sufficiently undemanding or flexible (while presumably being adequately remunerative to cover any costs incurred) to allow of assignations or indeed of long wandering walks full of exquisitely evoked existential angst about the situation.

Perhaps I feel this particularly acutely as I'm currently trying to find time in my crowded calendar to get my hair cut before it turns into my celebrated Yorkshire terrier/It from the Addams family impression.

I mean, like the people in that article that's been making the rounds about how adults don't have time to have friends, I recently made plans to get together for a coffee date with a friend I like, who lives in the same city, who is willing to hang out with the Junebug. Coffee. After work. Didn't have to get a babysitter. Know how long it took us to get together? Four weeks.

And so, looking back on my childhood, I boggle at my dad. Who, in addition to having a much more demanding job than mine, also, I discovered later, was well-known for fucking all and sundry. That's in addition to the three (consecutive, not concurrent) girlfriends he got serious enough with that he considered leaving my mother for them, before the one he actually did leave her for. How in the hell did he have time to date that much? No wonder we never saw him.