Pretired Baby doing a little swinging before the Seahawks game.
Lately I’ve been feeling increasingly time-crunched. I often joke I may need to go find a job just so I can have some free time again! I’ve even screeched those most emasculating of words, “OMG, I’m SO BUSY!”
The house is a mess. No, really, it’s getting embarrassing. This blog has been getting crusty from neglect (although traffic keeps rising — thank you!). I haven’t found the time to figure out how I want to invest my $100,000. (Although I’m somewhat dragging my feet while I watch what goes down with the government shutdown.) I haven’t been able to read many of my favorite blogs. I’ve got a book that is due back to the library soon and there’s still quite a bit of it left.
Ack!
But am I really that busy? I remember this excuse being used so commonly when I was working that I banned it from my excuse book, replacing it with “Sorry, it’s still a few items down on the priority list.” It seemed more honest than “I haven’t had time yet.”
You haven’t had time? Gah, how I hate that excuse (even when I catch myself saying it)! Because, really, we all have the same amount of time each day.
One of my favorite sayings is “the only way to get more time in each day is to steal some from the night.” Because it’s really about how we choose to spend our time — there isn’t an unequal distribution of hours each day depending on how important we think we are.
When I was working, the people who were most likely to give me the “I’m too busy” excuse were inevitably the ones spending the most time screwing around. In fact, I believe that if you want someone to do something for you, look for the busiest person. No one goes to the people who aren’t busy because they can’t get anything done. Frustratingly, some of the “too busy” folks were buddies of mine so I could see what they were really doing on Facebook. Hmm, seems like you weren’t TOO BUSY to spend eight hours playing Call of Duty all weekend, were you?
Pretired Baby has been waking up early lately and since he gets 90 percent of my attention when he’s awake, it cuts into my “me” time. My side consulting work has been very busy lately and I’m still picking away at the basement project during the handful of hours each week when the baby is awake and Pretired Mama can take care of him. We have breakfast, play for awhile and when he’s ready for his nap, I race to take a shower and begin my work for the day. When he wakes up, it’s lunch, maybe a trip to the park, more playing and then naptime again, when I race for the computer again for an hour or so. Then it’s time to make dinner, play, take a bath and finally bedtime for the baby. And then TV. Sweet, sweet TV. And Twitter. Sweet, sweet, Twitter.
After I’ve rested enough, I’ll stumble back to the computer for some blog writing or maintenance.
The days are flying by. Weeks are flying by. That voice in my head is sternly warning me that I “need to be getting something done.”
But am I really that busy? I still check Facebook umpteen times a day. I have time for TV most nights, where I glaze over and rest a bit. I still shower almost every day. Meals with my son are leisurely and usually hilarious. The kitchen is staying under control. Groceries are finding their way in the door and down my gullet. I even have time for drinks with a buddy once a week. I get close to eight hours of sleep every night. The schedule is firmly blocked out to ensure no Seahawks game is missed. (Go Hawks!)
So I’m not really busy at all. I’m filling my time with what is important to me, and mostly that’s Pretired Baby right now. Many of the other things impacting my time are self-inflicted as well, such as blogging or the basement project. And isn’t this what pretirement is supposed to be about? Doing what one WANTS to every day instead of schlepping to some job you hate?
I’m one of those people who when I’m not “too busy,” I’m bored. There is no in-between. And I always try to remember that we all get the same 24 hours. Using them as best I can should be the goal, not trying to squeeze more and more into those same hours.
The house can stay messy another week. The blog will be fine. The basement project will be done eventually. We’re going to the park. And we’re going to play on the swings. For as long as we want.
