I often lament that I don’t have time to study all the things I want to learn. Today I realized that I actually do have leisure time, but I choose to use it on other things. Nearly every day I spend some time blogging or reading things online (some educational, some frivolous), and I spend literally hours a week writing in my journal (what else would you expect from a history major?). Instead of wishing for more spare time I need to evaluate how I spend what I’ve got and then make any needed changes based on what activities are most important to me.
Perhaps that seems obvious, but I think it demonstrates an important principle. When I say, “I never have time to do X,” I feel powerless. When I say, “I choose to do X instead of Y because X is more important to me,” I feel that I am directing my life in accordance with my principles. I like that much better than victimhood.
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3 comments:
hehe ... yes lets prioritize! i need to start focusing on things that make me happy instead of the things that i feel that need to be done. ie: work on my business instead of doing dishes!! (i mean those don't really *need* to be done ... right?!)
its a hard thing to figure out, i'm still working on it. i know things are gonna get more complicated once #2 decided to make its appearance. i'm not looking forward to trying to balance things even better. i feel like i'm already struggling!!
(oh and i'm totally loving your topics lately, they totally make me think!)
We had a discussion at my book group in March about this. I said that women in our generation had more leisure time than ever. That met with serious dismay from every mother present. Because we are all so "busy."
I agree that women are busy. Perhaps busier now than at any time in history, with a multitude of opportunities available to us.
But what I meant was that we really spend so little of our time each day on survival issues compared to women just two or three generations ago. Do we bake our own bread? Grow and can all of our own fruits and vegetables? Raise our own meat? Line-dry (or even hand wash) all of our laundry and cloth diaper our babies? Gather eggs from the chickens? If we sit down are our hands busy mending, sewing or quilting? Do we spend hours each day cooking just to feed our insanely large families? NO!!!!
We are busy, but much of what we are busy doing IS leisure compared to what our grandmothers and great-grandmothers did. Just the fact that we are able to have this "conversation" shows that we have more leisure time. The change in women of our generation was partly brought about by the the sexual revolution, but perhaps more profoundly brought about by the sudden surge in time-saving devices we take for granted.
Example--microwave. It came out in the early 80's. Could you get through a day without it? I'm not sure I can. My grandmother always says, "The only thing good about the good old days is that they are OVER."
As our lives become busier and busier, I think it isn't just a matter of prioritizing, because there will NEVER be enough time. I think you sometimes have to say, "What is essential?" I'm to the point now that if I pick up a new hobby, something else has got to go.
A few summers ago I volunteered at a pioneer living history village in Salt Lake. My experience there taught me a lot about what "busy" meant two hundred years ago. Compared to handwashing clothes, making my own soap, milking the cows, and spinning thread to weave cloth to sew clothes for my family, etc., my modern-day chore list seems pretty wimpy.
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