When Your Time Comes Around

It was probably the fourth day. Possibly the fifth.
 
My alarm clock rang as it did every day at 6:30am. By alarm clock I mean the special sunrise simulation clock that suggests you get out of bed via the metallic sounds of recorded birds and a blinding full spectrum light that pierces the thickest sleep.
 
 As I do each morning, I spent the next thirty minutes on myself. I mapped out my day, I thought about things I would like to write about if I ever got the time. I don’t get up. I stay in bed. Sometimes, I go back to sleep. Other times, I watch TV on my iPad. One thing I never do is check email.
 
I cherish those thirty minutes. Time to myself in a world where I am time poor but request rich has more value than any information or communication. Even the news that my sister went into labor didn’t break those thirty minutes. 
 
 My world is defined in those thirty minutes. And while the definition may shift and change over that time, I never lose sight that it’s my world to define, and it’s my responsibility to get it right. At least one piece of it right.
 
 It was definitely the sixth day. 
 
 For one of the first times in my life, I took an extended vacation. The last time I was away from work this long I was getting my cervical spine repaired and I was regulated to the couch and medical marijuana. My focus then was to not get addicted to the pain killers or fall down and die. The first thing worried me more since I am as nimble as a ninja gazelle in a china shop with a bull. Or that’s what the medical marijuana told me.
 
 It was about 10am on that sixth day. I had done my morning me time, worked out a bit, meditated a bit, even checked email and other inboxes when the realization came over me … I have a dearth of time.
 
The one thing we have a finite amount of from breaths to beats is time. We cannot make more. We cannot share it, buy it or even give it away. You cannot even save it. It never stops. It literally cannot give two fucks about you. 
 
 You can only trade it. One thing for another. Working out instead of watching tv. Writing instead of reading. Even multitasking a trade-off. Rather than give one thing our time, we spilt up many things and trying to shove them into the same time block achieving just a portion of what we could have if we just gave one thing our time.
 
 On the sixth day of my vacation, I spent time on time. Not in a reprimand of wasted time, as time can never be wasted, only experienced, but as an optimization review. Yes, I got nerdy on time.
 
 I created a short list — no more than 5 items — of what I wanted to spend my time. Not out of responsibility or desire, but out of maximum ROI. Yes, I did a cost benefit analysis on my time. 
 
What I expected — a litany of finger pointing at the TV, internet, refrigerator and myself — didn’t happen.
 
 What did happen was I began to list out experiences that I wanted to, well, experience. Writing a book, traveling through Japan, different roles at different companies doing different things, kids, and maybe even building another company.
 
 I started to think about the things I was choosing to do rather than smoothing the path to the experiences I had listed. Social Media. Fear. Taking the easy path. Caring more about the reaction to the output, than the output itself. Disorganization. 
 
 The list got long. I worked on it for most of the next three days. I literally wept when I completed it. I had created difficulties in my life for the sake of making my life difficult.
 
 And I was done.
 
 Top of the list was things that stole moments through out the day. Things that when I was “bored” I did. Things that were comfortable and consistent and reliable. 
 
 If my past addictions have taught me anything, they have taught me that I don’t do anything half way. I am as binary as midnight and noon. If I wanted to change, it had to start with stopping.
 
For the rest of January, I am going to test this out. I am off Twitter and FB. Easy to say; hard to do. I will slip (I still eat a donut every Saturday), but mostly, I am going to trade the time I spend on social media for creative pursuits. I am taking a couple of writing classes. I am going to write more across different mediums, including this one.
 
The only social network that I am going to stick with is Instagram. I like purdy picktoors. Creativity that lives in visual mediums has always percolated my imagination, and more than anything, I need to spend time in the worlds I create.
 
 Time. Fucking hell. Who knew that it would be so important?