1. Dentist.
It has been months since your last visit and already it is time again to have a conversation with metal utensils in your mouth. A waiting room with parents and their kids who have gums for teeth take up every seat and floor space. The the only television in the building that has no channels plays the same infomercial for healthy brushing and demonstrations of flossing until the next patient has lost their patience, just in time to be examined orally.
The dentist speaks a scientific gibberish about each of your teeth, tells you that you have a geographic tongue, and you think to yourself that you have not been French kissing anyone, and then you get a report card and oral hygiene gift bag for your mouth to prepare for your next visit in three to six months. You have done a check-up every time you opened your mouth in the mirror. Looks clean.
2. Store.
Shopping for the necessities can be easy since you know where to go every time. Being a shopper is an existence that challenges your ability to buy only what you need. That and the circuitous paths you end up having to take no matter how many people are in the store. It is only a matter of time before you have to return to the store to resupply or to make a new addition to that shopping list you thought you had down pat.
3. Meetings and phone calls.
Obligatory and gratuitous at times, you end up making time and fitting people into your schedule that accommodate their needs more so than yours. Interviews take the cake when it comes to inconvenience. Set up the call, set up the place, set up the time. A day is only so long before you have to work on and finish the next priority in your pecking order. Say what you need to say and let us divide and conquer as soon as possible.
4. Restaurant.
Drive-thrus and takeout lines included, restaurants create this atmosphere of "when do I get to eat?" too soon and too fast. It is a jungle with booths and high-top tables where the waiters and waitresses are the next highest up in the food chain. You are just happy if the appetizer gets to you on time before the family next to you gets the check.
Dining out seems to becoming a rare occasion and the convenience of someone delivering is a bit more immediate than a meal you get right from the kitchen when dining out. Then there is the weight in values of quality and price and whether or not your patience can tell the difference. Sometimes you just want to rent a restaurant that gets your meal time right.
5. Jury duty.
Chances are that the court case you are in are clogging up the courts. There could be more important issues that need to be settled and you have a case that is possibly petty. If the case is serious but no one on the jury can come to a consensus, jury duty becomes an uncivil dispute. Always be on the side of justice, of course, but your vigilante side keeps gnawing at your heels and tells you to make it a swift justice for all.
6. Bed
Getting a good night's sleep is one of the most enjoyable and blissful sensations you can have. The only time it becomes a problem is when you do not want it to happen. That project that is due sooner than you know it sneaks up on you and your spending sleepless nights, and more than you should, to complete it. Sleep no longer is an adversary, it is the enemy you live and work against. If only you could be permanently nocturnal.
7. Gas station.
You are driving along and the gas gauge is inching its way closer and closer until it can cover the letter "E." A pit stop at the gas station is needed but oh so annoyingly inevitable. If you were a car manufacturer, all cars would be engineered with technology that makes them run on air. The next upgrade will flight, but you know it takes baby steps.
8. Reunions.
Family is important but so is your sanity. Old friends from school reenter your life but their company does not feel the same. How many of them remember your name? How many of their names do you remember? You only see them maybe twice a year at the most, and both your memories should be solid after all these years, but the awkward get-together and holiday visits can grow on you in overwhelming vacation planning ways.
9. Apartment.
You could have your own functional and lovely apartment. Nothing is wrong with the interior, furnishings, or amenities at all. It is the return that gets to you that is so tedious that your apartment becomes everyone else's apartment. The only escape is to visit another apartment, to make you homesick again and forget how sick of home you were in the first place.
10. Out in public.
To have perfect privacy without the interference of the outside world or the inside world would be a miracle. There is no avoiding the foot traffic or the face-to-face encounters of the public eye. You only get so much me time before you have to forfeit it to construct your social life again. Being human is hard but not impossible.
Going places is half the battle.
