Monday, January 7, 2013

Mysterious Monday: Elusive Time


“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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