Whose Side is Time On, Anyway?

I really don’t know how I managed to have almost no free time in my life. I mean, it’s nice to be busy, and it’s nice to be able to account for all of my time, but someone just reminded me that you still need to be sure to have balance. I have to resist peer pressure a lot to avoid adding anything additional into my days. My time away from work is spent devoted to my daughter. So, really, I don’t necessarily want to have other things to do, if it means spending time away from her. So, where do I sacrifice? Maybe I should go to bed later. That would buy me some evening hours to read, watch a movie, or, um, clean (as I will be doing tonight in advance of weekend house guests). I may even squeeze in a phone call or two (I don’t ever feel like there’s a good time to talk on the phone, and as a consequence, often feel somewhat isolated). But going to bed later would ensure that I don’t get up at 5am to go to the gym. (Okay, well, that’s another point—since the weather has gotten cold, I haven’t gone to the gym anyway. I need to get off my duff and start that again.) My free time consists of a 45 minute window in the mornings at 5am for the gym, 20 minutes after Samantha gets on the bus at 7:30 for me to eat breakfast and surf the web, an occasional hour during my lunch break at work (although I often will just eat at my desk and work through it since I’m almost always 10-15 minutes late to work in the morning), and between 8pm and 10pm, when I’ll eat dinner and relax with my husband, watch tv, do laundry, etc. (Okay, so there’s some free time there, but I do like to have it be as mindless as possible.) My blog is suffering from a serious lack of motivation, too. Hopefully my joining the Crazy Hip Bloggers will help me become a little bit more conscientious and inspired!

I’m not complaining, I’m just trying to figure out if there’s a more efficient way to dole out my day, to perhaps catch up on a book, or find a social life. I’ve been reading the same freaking book for the last 13 months, which is totally unacceptable to me (granted, it’s large and slow-moving, but that’s still no reason), when I’ve always been an avid reader. Maybe I should keep it in the bathroom or something, because next to the bed is doing me absolutely no good when I can’t stay awake for more than a page or two at night.

Amazingly, I do feel better for having written that. Blogging certainly helps to sort through stuff sometimes, allowing me to see things more objectively. It’s not how much time I have, but how I use it. The fact that I’ve stolen 10 minutes of my workday (okay, let’s call it lunch!) to write this gives me hope…


I now leave you with a nice, static-y picture of my girl. :-)