Time directive
My thoughts on time … well, first, the irony of all ironies is that I keep running out of time over the weekend to write this damn reflection! There are a couple of things that come to my mind when I think about time in the era of COVID:
- Where the hell does it go?! Seriously, I wake up, blink, and it’s 4pm, blink again and it’s bloody May 2. I don’t remember this happening as much before COVID. Occasionally days would drag on or long periods of time would go by quickly, but mostly it just kinda clicked along like normal. Now it’s totally normal for me to look at the clock and say, “how the hell?!”
- The COVID year doesn’t count: It’s not that I didn’t do things during the year, I actually accomplished a surprising amount especially after the summer (which let’s be honest, was just a hot mess), but I get confused when I’m trying to figure out when something happened, or how long ago it happened. This is even for events that happened before COVID. I was trying to remember how long I’ve been in Muncie, and for the life of me kept getting it wrong by a year, and then I realized that I wasn’t counting 2020 – it just kinda disappeared.
- The myth of more time: My time looks really different now than it did before COVID. I used to travel for work all the time, and that obviously came to a screeching halt last March. That’s made me realize that I LOVE not traveling!! Traveling is the worst. Switching time zones, flying, sleeping in unfamiliar beds, living out of a suitcase, lacking any sort of routine – I hate it all. I also have such a better work/life balance now. I’ve actually picked up some hobbies that have been laying by the wayside for several years which has been so good for my mental health … but STILL I find that I don’t have time to do all the things I want to do in a day. There’s never enough time to sleep well, take care of your physical health and mental health, invest in meaningful relationships, enjoy your life and hobbies, do chores, make your community and world a better place, continue to learn and stretch your brain, and – oh yeah – work!
- 8+ hours/day at work is stupid: Closely related to the above point, now that I work exclusively from home, I don’t feel the pressure to have my butt in a seat, eyes staring at a screen for 8 days a day, and here’s the thing I’m more productive!! This shouldn’t shock me, research has been saying this for years, but it’s interesting to see it in my own life. I get MORE done when I work fewer hours. There’s only so much productive brain work that I have in me in a day, so when I limit my productive output to 4-6 hours a day, and then backfill the rest of the day with mindless things, I get more done and accomplish things more quickly.
I don’t know that this really speaks to the intention of this diary entry, but this is what you get. Ha!