Thoughts on Time

 Good Monday morning! It's a new week and a new day full of opportunities and possibilities! What will you do with your week?

I have been pondering this same question this morning. There will be the usual chores, laundry (every Monday!), dishes, floors and general pick up and either put away or pitch. And I will go to my part-time job a couple of days. But I also have a list of to-do's that is apart from the regular daily/weekly chores. This week it includes hauling out the cardboard accumulated in the garage, cleaning off the bed in the guest bedroom, cleaning up the pile of brush laying in the backyard so we can quit mowing around it, plus a bunch of household once-in-a-while chores. All I lack for the projects is time!

Time is a precious commodity. Each of us has 24 hours in any given day, and seven days in any given week. However, there is a big difference in time and available time. Available time is the time we haven't allocated to other chores, or in my case, waste!

Television has been considered to be a great time-waster in our American society. We can be entertained 24/7 by the boob-tube, especially if your standard for entertainment isn't very high. I don't feel we spend an unreasonable amount of time in front of the TV. If we are home for an evening and are looking to relax, we will tune in to a favorite series or find an entertaining movie. And I am almost always knitting or crocheting while we sit there, so I feel a bit more justified in "wasting" that time.

Probably the time-waster that has surpassed the time wasted on TV is the cell phone. Did you know that your phone tracks the amount of screen time you use? You can find it in your settings, and you should look sometime if you want a reality check. I looked at mine just now and I am averaging 4 hours and 8 minutes of screen time with 29 unlocks daily! Multiply that times 7 days a week and there goes one entire day! No wonder I don't have any time...I am wasting one entire day a week looking at my phone! Now I will credit myself that some of that time is occupying time that is already being wasted, like when I am waiting on something or someone or many times when I wake up in the night and am waiting to get sleepy again. But many of those hours are just simply time I should be doing something productive. 

Time is a bit like expanding foam in that if you take an activity out of  your day to make more time, other activities expand to fill the void. When we quit milking cows I thought that would free up 8 hours a day, which it did until all of life expanded into that space and I was still too busy. Same thing happened when I retired from the County. We always said when the kids left home and we were no longer chasing their activities that we would then have time for our own activities...and maybe we do to some extent, but we are still just as busy now as we were then. And we still have trouble scheduling in friends due to busy schedules!

And then there's the whole "getting older" thing that figures in. I know I don't work as fast or as consistently as I used to. This is painful to admit!

I've heard elderly people say that time hangs heavy on their hands with not enough to do. I have to admit that this concept is still a mystery to me. I consider myself lucky to be too busy rather than too idle, but shouldn't there be a happy medium? 

My comments sound cynical and complaining, but in reality I am so blessed to have so much to do in life. This means that my life has purpose and direction. It means that my life is full of family and love. It means that we have friends who enrich our lives beyond measure. It means we have places to go and things to do. And, most importantly for me, it means that at the end of a day I can feel satisfied with what I have accomplished, even if I am kicking myself around for not getting enough done.

Each of us was born with a finite number of days allotted to us. We have no idea how many days that is, only God knows that, but it is our duty to make the most of those days. Nothing is sadder than the life that could have done so much more but failed to do it. 

And having said all this, it's time to get up and wash those dishes, start that laundry, scrub those floors and figure out what's for dinner today! Hope you all are having a good week.