Lately, I feel really lonely.

I get to play with my awesome kid after work each day, but I miss other people. I saw a tweet the other day that linked to this article: Circle of Friends – Why working moms need their gal pals—maybe more than ever before—and how to keep them close.  It made me a little sad to realize that I don’t really have any super close gal pals. I think it’s partly who I am, I’ve always been really good at making lots of friends, but most of them were not super close. The amount of super close friends who know all my secrets has always been pretty low and right now that count is probably its lowest.

I don’t recall my mom going out for “girls nights” when I was growing up. Of course, when she was my age, I was nearly 13, could take care of myself and was probably lost in my own worries! (Middle school years were so full of drama that’s totally not drama when you grow up and look back on it.) Of course, my mom also had a good network of pals at work and that’s where my life is dramatically different. I telecommute, so my interactions with coworkers are very much limited to all business phone calls and all business video meetings. There’s no fun chit-chat or office parties or lunches out with friends. So that could contribute to these feelings of loneliness as well.

And then there is the whole thing about how hard it is to schedule time with friends. When you’re a kid it was just like, “Want to play after school?” Now it’s like, “Let me look at my calendar. What about this day? No, my kid has this, what about here? No, my husband has this. This day? No, I have a conference.”

I feel really guilty when I go out in the evenings, the extremely rare occasions that I do. I have friends that share on social media all the fun things with friends they do several times a week, but then… they are stay-at-home moms so I feel a little like “They’re stuck with the kids all day, their husbands are probably happy to let them go out and have an opportunity to be with the kids.” (Are husbands happy to spend time with their kids? Especially without the mom to take care of everything?) In my household, I feel like “We’ve both been working all day, so now it’s time to do home stuff.”

Is this just a generational thing? Like part of this whole “have it all” mentality that we’re so desperately trying to achieve these days? Maybe I’m supposed to have friends when I’m old and my kid is gone. I’ll join a bridge club. (Step 1: Learn what Bridge is.)

Let’s move on to other things:

I received this notification this morning:

So I’ve been on Twitter for 8 years now! Feel free to follow me! Follow @jillwillrun

I got a rock in my shoe the other morning. It was bugging me, poking into the side of my foot. I sat down on the curb to fish it out only to discover that it was IN my shoe.

I pushed it up a little so it didn’t poke my foot as much and finished out my run. I keep looking and I can’t find a hole to get it out. There must be one, somehow it got in there!

Do you carry something to protect yourself while you run outdoors? I’ve heard of people carrying pepper sprays, knives, and even guns! I was recently sent a little personal protection tool called the TigerLady. It’s modeled after a cat’s retractable claws.

I will never carry this when running. It’s an innovative idea, but the whole thing is just a wee bit too large for my dinky little hands. I feel like when I squeeze it to release the claws, I have to be extremely cautious so they don’t slide up and across my skin. And it feels bulky. I think it would be fine to carry in a purse and if I did happen to be out in the evening and felt a little uneasy, like I needed some kind of extra protection, I could pull this out. But it would be annoying in my hand for the entirety of a run.

I read this post the other day: Why Steve Jobs Didn’t Let His Kids Use iPads
I’m torn on it… I LOVE LOVE my technology. I’m going to be honest here. And it would be hard for me to give up my iPhone. But there are days where I get extremely annoyed at how tethered everybody is to these devices. Even in my own family, we can’t give each other our full attention. And while my daughter has learned a lot of great things from watching stuff on the iPad, there are also moments where she melts down if we try to take it away. But there is no way I’m going to shield her from technology so much that she is the weird kid who doesn’t know what these things are when she needs to use them either. It’s just part of being a parent I guess, in any generation. Navigating innovations and advancements as best you can.

What are your thoughts? On kids and technology or carrying protection while you are out exercises, making friends as adults, etc.