Tag Archives: schedule

The Battle For The Craziest Schedule: When Did Busy Become A Status Symbol?

Posted in Friendship, Life Ramblings, Relationships by

To do list v. to do list, calendar v. calendar, it seems like the battle for who has the craziest schedule is always on.  I hear it constantly.  I partake in it without realizing all of the time.  It seems the more miserable you are racing from one thing to the next, with the biggest list of things that need to get done, the more points you get.

When did free time become a bad thing?

I hear people ask this question when they’re talking about kids, but never about adults.  We debate if kids should be hyper scheduled or just playing out in the backyard and how many activities are too many for them.  But what about us?  What about the adults of the world?  When did a little empty space on our planner become non-existent and shouldn’t we be at least a little worried about that?

One of my best friends from college lives in the Twin Cities area, not too far from me.  When we try to find time to get a cup of coffee and catch up, it requires both of us with our calendars and typically scheduling at least two weeks out.  One time we were on four weeks out, without a single hour we could both meet, and I finally said our schedules were just too ridiculous and I needed extra hours in the day.  She laughed, “We’d just fill those too.”

She’s right, but why?  No really, not a hypothetical question.  Why is this cool?  Why do we consider it validating not to have time to do the things we like to do?  What is so great about a person who does so much that they don’t have time to enjoy doing any of it?

This year, I think I finally over did it.  I took on WAY too much.  I thought I was superwoman, and I thought no schedule was too crazy for me to make it work.  And once you take it on, you have to make it work.  But the toll it took to pull it off was too great.  In the end, it doesn’t feel worth it.  I gave up too much.  When you can never stop, even the things that should be fun, aren’t anymore.

I’m sure that once the dust settles, there’s going to be an alarm that goes off in me screaming “TOO MUCH FREE TIME! FILL IT IMMEDIATELY!”  But I’m going to try to ignore it.

The girl I’m trying to get back to, the one that existed before this three year detour, she was crazy busy too.  But she was crazy busy with things she loved.  Things that she left feeling better than when she came in.  And she kept room in her schedule for friends and Sunday naps and cooking dinner.

From the spot I am sitting right now I can see a bunch of books I bought but haven’t had time to read, the guitar I wanted for my birthday that I haven’t had time to learn to play, a pair of shoes I haven’t had time to return which will probably not be returnable anymore… It’s not that I want to sit around and do nothing.  It’s that I have these things I want to do that I don’t leave time for.  And there are a whole bunch of people I haven’t left enough time for either.  And that needs to change.

I’m going to clean out my schedule like I clean out my closets.  Everything out, and you have to meet specific criteria to get back in.  I need to set some priorities and limits.  And then I need to stick to them… That’s always the hard part.  But I think it’s crucial to the rest of the Restoration succeeding.

It’s About Time

Posted in Life Ramblings by

Let me start by saying, if I ran the world, we would do away with Daylight Savings Time.

I got out of class last night and the sun was still up, and suddenly, the world was just a better place. Granted, if I had gotten up last week at this time, it wouldn’t be dark as night outside like it is right now.  But who cares?!?! It’s morning. Most people need their coffee to get through it anyway.  But the evening?  When the sun goes down in the evening it does something. It tells you to wind down and gets you all relaxed and sleepy… And then nothing ever gets done. And when it starts to set in the middle of the afternoon? Hopeless.

So now that the world is back to the way it is supposed to be, and  my days feel longer… they still feel short.  Do you ever feel like time is just messing with your head?

Yesterday I was with some friends, doing more talking than working when I really should have been working.  You’d think time would fly, right?  So I look at the clock, start packing up.  Nope. I’m an hour early.  And that hour crawled, even though I was having fun.  I’m not complaining, I’m just saying that I was off.

Then suddenly, it was this morning.  I don’t know where the rest of my day went.  In my last class, apparently my professor went on a forty minute mindless monologue.  Everyone was complaining when we left, that time stopped during it.  I really didn’t even notice. I don’t know where I was. My body was in the chair.  I even thought I was kind of paying attention.

I have absolutely no idea what happened between 7pm and 11pm.  It disappeared.

My battle? Half of it’s about time.

It feels like time is crawling but it’s also slipping away too quickly.  I can’t get my mind around it.  I can’t make sense of it. I’m not trying to stop it or speed it up. I just want to feel like it’s moving at some kind of routine pace.

It seems as if time speeds up a little bit every year.  Is it just me? Or is this a common phenomenon?  And is there an age where it levels off? Because at this exponential rate, I’m going to be 35 for about 10 minutes. Yet I’ll have really long days…

Am I over thinking this? Absolutely.

The problem is, time seems to hold all of the cards right now.  I get my life back in 65 days. I’m waiting. I’ve been waiting. It’s crawling by so slow.  But I have way too much work to get done before then, and the days don’t seem to slow down to let me accomplish anything.  It’s just flying by.  I can’t move on with my life until time gets me there.  I can’t catch up on my life unless time gives me a little room to work.

This may be my least cognizant post of all time.  If you think I’m insane, check back tomorrow.  Chances are I still will be, but it might at least be more understandable.  But just trust me.  Time is playing with me.  It really is.

At least the sun is on the right schedule again.