"where'd all the time go?" -Dr. Dog

On not having enough time every week. On the importance of proximal community. Communes???

The change from school time management to work time management is incredibly different. I have more time in some ways and less in a lot. I don’t have the ever-looming feeling of dread because of an upcoming test or homework I forgot about. Instead I have 8 hours of my day stolen from me for a job I could do in a lot less time. But this post isn’t to complain about time, or to rebuke my time management skills.

I’m writing generally here, because it’s my experience, but to me and for me there are a very limited number of time slots that are free for me to fill with whatever I want. I’m at a point in my life where I want to prioritize my writing. Writing is something that really takes absolute focus. There’s no multitasking around it. That being said, I have several other priorities that also demand slots in my week. And all this falls under my baseline philosophy that doing something every week or every other week is integral to progress and relationship building. Weekly and bi-weekly tasks, events, interactions create consistency over time. So come with me while we explore time in my life.

My week & how my time slots are currently filled and scheduled:

1. Monday pre-work (7am) 5:15am read + coffee + journal

   1. Monday post-work- soccer & dinner.

2. Tuesday pre-work (8am) 6am write + coffee

   1. Tuesday post work- Usually Community group through church but take a break for holidays so free for now.

3. Wednesday pre-work (7am) 5:15AM read + coffee + journal

   1. Wednesday post work- Date night / Recurring hang with friend

4. Thursday pre-work (8am) 6am write + coffee

   1. Thursday post work- Standing happy hour at our house & dinner after. Good time to deepen a group of friends and catchup on life. Expecting to see someone on a regular basis and feeling sure they will be there (wherever there is) feels important.

5. Friday pre-work (7am) 5:15AM read + coffee + journal

   1. Friday post work- free

6. Saturday - Free (but usually have a project I have to work on at the house)

7. Sunday.- Breakfast, church, lunch, groceries, cleaning, volleyball, dinner.

(shoutout google calendar)

That is my schedule with absolute productivity and no margin for interruption (something i’m learning about). For example, some Sundays we only get to church, then dinner. We end up doing other things, or nothing. Sometimes you just have to loaf and watch some tv/ movies. Based on my schedule of what I am already prioritizing- Mondays are out, Wednesdays are out, Thursdays are out, Sundays are out.

So available are:

1. Tuesdays after work and before or after cooking dinner at home (trying to eat out less). we’ll call that one slot because really can only fit one thing in.

2. Fridays after work BUT this is usually when people are feeling social and have birthday parties / events. we’ll call this a slot as well. I dont normally have capacity to do more than one thing on Fridays after work.

3. Saturday. We’ll call this three slots. Morning slot, a meal slot, and evening slot.

so there are, let’s say, five slots free every week operating at maximum efficiency and productivity.

[sort of ended up ranting so skip past this next paragraph if you’d like to just get the gist of how much more I want to do than what I have time for]

Is this enough to call my family members? (there is a lot of them) (4 slots MINIMUM). Is this enough to call each of my long distance friends who I want desperately to keep up with (5 slots MINIMUM)? Is this enough to pursue my dream of writing a novel(2 slots)? When do I fix my 1984 bronco that’s sitting in my garage needing a new water pump, radiator, battery, 4x4 linkage, and who knows what else (8 slots)? When do I run the Bronco for an hour so it doesn’t just deteriorate (1 slot)? When do I run my motorcycle so it doesn’t deteriorate (1 slot)? (oh yeah I forgot I love riding my motorcycle and it gives me a lot of life). When do I work out (2-3 slots)? When do I spend more than 30 minutes reading the books I want to read (2 slots)? When do I water the sod so it doesn’t die in our backyard (1 slot)? When do I rake & bag all the leaves in our front yard so that grass doesn’t die (3 slots)? When do I meal prep breakfast and lunches so I can use that time efficiently and eat food that’s healthy for me (1 slot)? When do I fix the plumbing in my house, or change the AC filters, or sell the stove and the old chair and the old bookshelf (3 slots)? When do I call my mortgage company because they still owe us $ from pulling mortgage payment twice by mistake (1 slot)? When do I call the vintage furniture company because they owe us $ from breaking our dining table during transit (1 slot)? When do I power wash the driveway and the walls on my 1940’s house because they are dirty from 85 years of existing (3 slots)? When do I write my wife and friends letters because that is one way I like to communicate my appreciation for them (2 slots)? There are certainly more things that I want/ need to do that I am forgetting to note.

That’s 40 slots at least assuming maximum productivity for each task. (I’d, of course, love for a conversation with a long distance friend or family member to take up more than a slot each. That would be very special.) We said I had 5 slots every week. So that’s 35 things at minimum I cannot do every week. Even if I was ultra scheduled and did bi—weekly tasks i’d still have 30 things that I couldn’t do. Even if every month I rotated every slot I did on a weekly basis (exhausting) I would still have 20 tasks that I did not get to in any given month.

I’m being dramatic for writing’s sake. Here’s some optimism because although in this post I am being extremely pessimistic, I am an optimist. I love my life and everything in it. I am very privileged to be able to do the things I do and have the people in my life that are in it. My job does allow me to make some phone calls during the day and knock out some chores here and there during the day as well. (it does leaves me feeling guilty though because my job does request maximum productivity so whenever I am not firing on all cylinders at work I do feel stress. Self imposed, I guess)

Maybe you feel similar struggles. Maybe you don’t, but I cannot be alone in feeling like I don’t have enough time to do everything I want to do.

That leaves us in a peculiar position. One in which we have to narrow down and drop some of our priorities if we want to really devote time to the ones that matter. Either that or win the lottery so we can not work and have hella more slots in our days to do the things we actually want to do.

((I forgot about kids too. No kids now, what of when I do have kids, what then. Obviously that becomes a huge priority. What of time then?))

There hasn’t been any advice or theories given yet in this post, but here is some. As much as the internet is cool, proximal community is advantageous. What I mean by that is I think casual run ins and group hangouts are, for lack of a better term, great for knocking many birds with one stone.

Delving into that some more, if family and friends all lived in the same city, the same neighborhood even (thinking about that does make me nervous) you’d run into each other and know what’s going on in each others lives without necessarily having to schedule a coffee, lunch, phone call. 10 run ins a month (at the coffee shop, grocery store, on a walk, popping by houses, events, etc) and one or two intentional hangouts go a much longer way for deepening a friendship and is much more sustainable than scheduling something every week or every other week. People who live near each other often end up hanging out with each other because it’s easy. There are a lot of hard things in life and so sometimes the easy option is the right one unfortunately.

I’m not saying everyone needs to go live in a commune. I too have weird & off-putting feelings towards the idea of a commune. Maybe it’s just the word itself. BUT I do think a commune-adjacent approach to proximity with living situations, friendship, family would lead people to greater contentment in their life.

All thoughts welcome & encouraged.

As always, if you enjoy rambling thoughts on mildly relatable subject matter subscribe below to find me in your inbox on Monday and Friday mornings. Maybe even more frequently! Today is neither yet here we are. Instead of doing something from the list of things above that I have to do I took some time to complain about it. Nice.