91 Hours of Loneliness

I feel kinda lonely right now. I thought I must be crazy or perhaps indulging in too many re-runs of Steel Magnolias, but when I crunched the numbers, I realized I only see my wife for about 18% of the week. Maybe I wasn't crazy after all? You see, my wife and I start the doldrums of our week again tonight. We work opposing schedules (I work at night and she works in the day.) From now till Saturday afternoon I'll only see her by chance. After about four hours that afternoon, i'll go to back to work for the Saturday night shift and see my family again Sunday morning. After Hannah finishes work Monday (Sunday and Monday are my days off, Saturday and Sunday hers) we again have a few hours before turning in and getting ready for the next day and the rest of the week apart.

I should say now that I'm not writing this for sympathy. Our family is secure, stable and mostly happy. I just found a remarkable statistic that perhaps justifies a little loneliness, perhaps even a little selfishness with my time and it always helps me to see the field when I write, talk and get my thoughts out of my head.

As I see it, most humans take roughly 112 waking hours in a week. I spend roughly 21 [hours] with my wife, more or less depending on how her illness is treating her. A single bread winner family with a 9 - 5 job spends closer to 72 daylight hours with their spouse or roughly 64% of the week - or at least the potential to.

You see, even though the numbers make feel less guilty about a feeling of loneliness, they still don't earn me any sympathy. I'm lucky to sacrifice almost no time with my daughter, that goes for my wife as well. I know some families struggle to find time with their children while trying to support their family. Others struggle to find work at all. I guess i'm just hoping you too will have one of those "whoa" moments and realize what value your family time has and cherish it for as long as you have it because something tells me that even if I had all the time in the world with my wonderful wife and beautiful daughter - it still wouldn't feel like enough.