I read a quote* the other day about how, if you leave someone or a group of people feeling anything less than stellar about yourself, or the world, or the future, or the past, you’re spending time with the wrong people. Tonight is my monthly girls’ dinner, which sounds like some sort of Sex and the City throwback or feminist coven or sorority meeting, and it sort of is all three of those, in a way, but mostly it’s just a set time in the calendar for me to catch up with some of my favorite people; people who leave me feeling like I’ve risen when we part.

I’ve had this overriding need for a “break” lately – from lots of things, but nothing I can really name, so it’s hard to explain – and today, as I crammed myself into a subway car, carrying heavy bags that leave ridges in my shoulders, trying to amp myself up for another long day, because aren’t they all just so long? Is it just me?, I let myself entertain the notion of escaping. And I mean really escaping – like, withdrawing from the known world for a month, retreating to a cabin in Montana with no internet access, and just decompressing and being and thinking and writing.

It’s a lovely daydream, but alas. I can’t. There is too much to do, always, and there is always a fine sheen of guilt for not getting it all done in the time or manner on which I had planned, and I am an adult, despite this hissy fit I seem to be having, who should be willing and able to handle her own baggage, and my problems are first world problems anyway, because as Louis C.K.’s standup goes, I could be someone who hasn’t had a glass of clean water in a decade, or someone whose daughter never came home, but instead I am an American, a thriving one, who has nothing to complain about (other than the crazy Tea Partiers and my eroding reproductive rights). And plus, I just really want to see these friends tonight, and every month, for our dinner, which I would not be able to do from a cabin in Montana.

*Okay, it was someone’s Facebook quote. But it was attributed to a real person. I just can’t remember who.

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