It's important to have time to yourself. Everyone needs to have a portion of their day or week that's just for them, doing just what they want to do. I do a lot of things during the day that need to be done or that I've committed to do so many I have very little time left that's just for me. Sometimes I think the most important time of my day is that small amount of time I have remaining for doing something lazy, something silly, something relaxing and most important of all, something for me and no one else.
I've written before about all the things that take up the day like laundry, dishes, feeding, making meals, cleaning up toys, playing with children, restocking, driving to school and other activities, shopping for children things, shopping for groceries, shopping for other necessities. A large portion of my day is taken up with things that are related to being a mom and keeping a household running.
There are other things in my life that I've made a commitments to do. By making those commitments, I am committing my time. I'm always glad I've made the commitments overall, but sometimes it can feel like work even though it's elected work. For example, I have unintentionally gotten myself elected as the neighborhood coordinator. So now that I have the position, until I can hand it off to the property management company, and it takes up time. There are rewards to the "job" because I've met great families and we're a closer community as a result. But it's lots of emails and conversations and it can be tedious and I frequently find myself saying, "I should have never started this."
I also believe strongly in participating, volunteering and taking an active role in my child's school. This also involves lots of time commitment doing things like cutting pictures out of magazines, making sewing cards, being the New Parent Liaison and Room Parent and, of course, lots of emails. It's not "my time," buy it's important to me and I continue to sign up for additional ways I can help at school. Rewards? There are many. I've met some great people and I have a far better understanding of what happens at my son's school and I feel like I'm contributing to his education.
I'm also a layout editor for a journal on magic and science. This is a fun as well as frustrating job. It's fun because the content of these journals is always interesting. It's challenging because I'm learning how to do things in laying out a magazine or "copy" that I wouldn't have learned otherwise. And it's frustrating because Microsoft Word likes to taunt me by it's quirks and "features." But overall, it's been a very rewarding experience.
I have personal commitments too. Every day I write a blog post. I would like to say it only takes me ten minutes, but with five sections and my verbosity, it seems to take me longer. It's a nice part of my day though because I get a chance to write something I've been thinking about and I know that if I write it down today, I'll be able to go back and read it much later on. I always wanted to be a journaling person, but I just don't like to write in a journal. The blog medium, combined with the desire to document my children's development has been the motivation I needed to start writing.
I also have two web sites with pictures of my children I maintain monthly. It doesn't take that long to get them done, but it takes longer than I'd like them to because I coordinate pictures and videos across multiple cell phones and DSLR. I have to find the best pictures and videos across hundreds of options, come up with captions, upload videos and then send an email to family. I am thinking of doing this every other month next year, but for now, the beginning of the month has me scrambling to get the, "picture pages" done.
Where has all of this gotten me? I think it's turned me into a Time Cynic. There is only so much time in the day, and I would like for a little bit of it to be for something I want to do outside of commitments and obligations, be it sit in the tub, go shopping for pants that fit, run, watch a TV show or just play a little game on my iPad in bed before I fall asleep.
I've found that I'm getting jaded. I'm reminded of a Henry Rollins Spoken Word concert in which he says, "People are killing me one minute at a time. It's like they're jabbing me with teenie tiny knives, killing me slowly." He tells a story of the line at the airport at the metal detector and how people seem to be confused that they need to remove metal from their person so they can pass through successfully. He likens every minute of his time that's wasted by these people as minutes of his life that's being wasted when he could be doing something else.
I find myself frequently thinking the same thing, however it's about "interesting articles" or "amazing YouTube videos" more today. I know there are tens of thousands of great articles and scads of videos on YouTube that I would laugh at, love, want to share with my friends and overall enjoy. But there's just not enough time to watch and read them all. I wrote here a while back about being, "food obligated" when someone gives you food and how I feel obligated to use the food, even if I don't like or didn't want the food. I have the same response with articles and YouTube videos. People email me them frequently. Many days all I want to do is clear out my inbox so I can get the other eleventy-twelve things on my list done so I can finally watch one TV show or have a relaxing bath before falling asleep.
The other day my husband was across the room watching a video he said I had to see. He described it and it did sound very good, just like something I'd like. But I was so pressed for time. I find myself getting frustrated because at the end of the day, I just want a little bit of time to myself, and I don't want to be YouTube obligated, even if the video is sent by someone who only sent it to me because they knew I would like it and appreciate it. So... I deleted the email from my husband and I didn't watch the video.
I told him about it the next day and explained why. He was great, he said it was something I didn't need to see and in fact, it was longer than he had expected it to be. I have to tell you though, it was freeing to delete an email and not watch the video. I don't have friends and family who send me random articles and videos. The all know how I feel about this, and I always appreciate their consideration.
I'm even having to be a time cynic with myself. I like to run. Running takes a minimum of an hour. It can take three hours to run a long run on the weekend and then there's the twenty minutes afterwards for a shower. If I want to run, I'm going to have to cut out other things in my life because there are just not enough hours in the week.
And what about Television? The shows of today are well-written, compelling and the actors are all great. There is so much to choose from and I would love to watch more. This past monththe new seasons have started. We're only a few weeks in and already we have twenty hours of shows that we're behind on on our DVR. My husband and I talked about what we cared about the most and what we could cut. For posterity's sake, here are the shows I record:
- NCIS
- CSI
- Criminal Minds
- Castle
- Fringe
- The Big Bang Theory
- Doctor Who
- Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe
- Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern
- The Best Thing I Ever Ate
- The Best Thing I Ever Made
If there is a new episode of each of these every week, that's ten hours of television I need to make time for every week. It's not going to happen. I watch the two "Best Thing" shows in the morning because they're food-based and my son will happily eat his breakfast during these upbeat food shows, but the rest of them I have to find time for. At the end of last year's seasons we were hours and hours behind and we dropped some shows. Yesterday I dropped some more. I really like all of the ones above and hate to drop any, but I might have to.
The good news is, watching one of the shows above is part of that "me time" because it's relaxing and it's just the sort of thing I like to do at the end of a night. That is, if I have enough time to watch a show before I need to get to bed so I can get up at 5:40AM to get a run in in the dark before I have to get the children up.
So where did I start and where have I gone with this blog post? Because I'm sure you've got to get your dinner made at this point and I'm still yap yapping. I have found that I jealously guard any time that I can have just to me, irrespective of commitments I've made in my life. I've realized there is very little time in the week left after everything else gets done. And because I value that time so much, I'm reevaluating everything to see where I can make more time, such as YouTube and television shows.
I'm suppose to be positive thinking here. I'm not mad or upset that my life is the way it is. I could volunteer less, leave the house a mess, not go running, not worry about the picture pages or this blog, but those things are very important to me. I just need to make sure I make a little time, just some time, where I don't have anything that needs to be done. And keep in mind that it's good to be busy. I've been bored before and at first it's fun, and then it's steady hell. So I'm happy about my busy life. It makes me value and appreciate that little time I have just for me even more.
The Big Boy Update: Line it up, Choo choo! He likes trains—what little boy doesn't—but he associates things in a row with the phrase, "choo choo." Last night he lined up three books on the coffee table and said, "choo choo" to daddy, pointing to his work. Today he's out of school with a low fever from last night and a cough. He's going to the doctor this afternoon to confirm it's nothing of concern. The fever is mostly gone, but it seems prudent to have the cough checked.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: Will walk for food. She's got new shoes. She looks so much older in her shoes. She is getting better at standing and will take several steps, but she's only interested in walking from time to time. This morning after her bottle, she was interested in her brother's food. I did some tests. She was willing to stand and follow me all around the kitchen, standing, taking a few steps, falling and then getting back up, as long as I would continue to hand her pieces of cereal.
Someone Once Said: I used to think I was serving humanity… and I pleasured at the thought. Then I discovered that humanity does not want to be served; on the contrary it resents any attempt to serve it. So now I do what pleases me.
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