“If I could save time in a bottle, the first thing
that I’d like to do…”
Well, Jim Croce is a bit more romantic than I am. I’d
spend some time sleeping, some time having fun with my family, some time
writing, some time promoting, etc. With the New Year, many of us have made resolutions;
some refuse to make resolutions, calling them too nebulous, and instead make
goals. I’ve made both, but without finding time to put the work to action,
neither resolutions nor goals will come to fruition.
The key to this is “finding”
time. We cannot “make” time, nor can we capture it in a bottle. I decided to
take a good hard look at my schedule and figure out what was happening to my
time. (Gonna do that with the finances with hubby—SHHH! Don’t tell him!)
First of all, I have to stop letting the time
thieves rob me.
Criminal #1: My eldest son. For some reason, E can
get up at oh-dark-thirty while at a training and be where he needs to be when
he needs to be there. When I tell him we need to leave by 6:30 so that I can
get back in time to exercise before getting his brother up, this becomes a
problem. I shall have to contact his commanding officers and find out what it
is that they do to get him in gear. Some days, when I go to pick him up at the
school, I have waited in excess of 30 minutes for him as he gets caught up in a
meeting or some such thing. Add to that, for some reason, I have to ask him to
do things numerous times to get them done.
Criminal #2: My youngest son. Waking him up has been
a problem since he was born. For a child who never napped, he can sure sleep.
Waking him begins with “J, time to get up!” His response is a pitiful, “Can I
have 5 minutes?” Five minutes later, I’m back and for the next five to ten
minutes I am pushing, pulling and prodding him (verbally—he’s too heavy for me
to lift nowadays) out of bed. He also needs to be told more than once to
complete tasks.
Criminal #3: Disorganization. Disorganization leads
me to making 4 or more trips to the store every week. It leads to looking for
things that should be to hand, which wastes up to 30 minutes each occurrence.
Criminal #4: Computer games/internet. For this, I
need to simply turn off the internet when I write or hang out
with my family or sleep. I have thought that it might be a good idea to limit my
internet time and use a timer. Using a timer has helped in other areas. I’ll
set the timer for 30 minutes and during that time, I’ll do only housework or
only work-related work or only writing or whatever.
Long and short of it is that we all have only 24
hours in a day. I will never be one of those super-organized, Aviance women who
can do it all. If you are one of those “I juggle work, college, kids, hubby (or
single mothering), volunteerism, homemade dinners, bake sale fundraisers, AND
still have time to write 5K a day, all with a cheerful smile and a spotless
home” sort of women, please go away now. You are too perfect to read my
imperfect blog.
My major resolution is to find more time from what I waste; my
main goal is to write the 250 words per day that I’ve spoken of. But if I find
a bottle filled with time, I won’t let you know. It’ll be mine, all MINE! Mwa
ha ha! (Can you tell I don’t get much sleep?)
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