Ciao!

I did it. I broke up with my book club. Humor me as I rant.

We've been together for about two and a half years, and the relationship just wasn't working for me. I've been struggling with getting out since last summer. Why the hell would cutting ties with a book club be so damn hard for anyone? For one thing, I like each of the women. However, it is with these people that I work, and it is my home at which the group always wants to meet. I tried, really tried to make it work for me, but my heart just isn't in the group. For so long, it has felt like everyone relied on me to do all of the work; and as with any lopsided relationship, wanting to break up is inevitable. It requires a great deal of energy to just do it somewhat gracefully without hard feelings, and hard feelings are the last thing I want to foster at the workplace. Last night, I simply stated that graduate school took up too much of my time and that there would be an indefinite hiatus from meeting at my house. Now I am free.

But allow me to vent some more:

The books the group chooses usually do not interest me that much. I do not care for chick fiction, action novels, nor popular fiction with relatively cut and dry interpretation. It's like sex without mutual pleasure. Life is too short and there are too many good books to content oneself with someone else's literary preferences.

Because our group consists of people who work together, invariably when we meet, we yabber and gossip more about work than the book. After every get-together, I lie in bed mulling over whether too much wine caused me to say anything that might later come back to haunt me. It reek of being in a rut.

I always drink too much. 'Nuf said.

While at first it was flattering to be considered the host with the most, I am way over having the meetings toujours chez moi. I hate having to wrap up my work early and cracking the whip on my family to put their crap away for my co-workers.

Many of the original and most interesting people from our group have moved on to new jobs, and the conversational predictability of the group is alienating to anyone from the outside.

The final act that secured my exodus came when I set up a blog to make information more accessible to everyone. Wouldn't you know it that almost all of the regulars are not the least bit interested in it. I love technology, and the notion that an educator might not be curious to try and learn something new, especially a medium that kids might embrace, irritates me. I suppose we just think differently.

Dang! And I so love to read and talk about books.