Re: "... and the months and years tick by"
One way to look at it would be: the gravity felt by your space station would be less than the earth, but because it's mass is smaller than the earth by the same amount, the resultant force is the same.
What you want to do is to set up a burn that leaves you orbiting a bit closer to the sun than the Earth does, so you'll perform a revolution of the sun in just less than a year, whereupon you do a quick burn to get yourself back orbiting the Earth (or you use a transfer ship to do the same thing more efficiently).
PS, if you want a better understanding of things like this, go play Kerbal Space Program, XKCD is right about this.