Now that I get around to enumerating that list in the previous post, it doesn't seem so bad at all. A girlfriend, Magic, and a little more work - so what, right? And my sessions at the gym have petered out completely over the past few months - jogging on a treadmill was just a chore, fitting it into my day actually was hard now and then, and I've been eating at least a little bit more healthily so I feel I don't need it quite so much - so the time saved there makes up for the extra time spent actually at my desk. The point is, these are not so difficult or time-consuming that I'm missing out on sleep or anything else that's important.

However, it is more than I'm used to. In all of 2009 I spent most my free time at playing WoW, and occasionally spend a while hanging out with my roommates or just reading stuff online (Cracked or TV Tropes or the comment sections of the blogs I read, stuff like that). Probably an average of once a week I'd go out on a date or with friends (mostly friends from work or Drinking Liberally) or join my roommates when they went out to something. The weekends were the same as after work, except that about once a weekend I'd also walk to a local restaurant for breakfast or lunch. Basically, it wasn't that much, it was easy to fit in something else if it came up or waste an hour with no repercussions, and it was easy to make a goal in WoW or something and devote hours to it if I wanted.

By contrast, over the past week I went on a date Friday night with T., went to a M:tG tournament Saturday afternoon/evening with Paul and Dave, went for a walk with T. Sunday to take advantage of the nice weather, and had another date with T. Wednesday night. Also, last Friday I worked about a half-day even though I was supposed to have it off. That is on top of the usual work schedule and raids with my guild in WoW Tuesday and Thursday nights. I think most of the past six weeks have been like that, or if not quite that busy, certainly closer to it than to the same period in March 2009. And this coming weekend, like I said, I won't be around either and I'll have to spend some time tonight getting ready for it.

Objectively I'm sure this isn't all that unusual an amount of activity - some people work much longer hours, some people have much more time-consuming hobbies or social lives, etc. - but it is unusual for me and it's taken a bit of getting used to.