The other day I
had a whole day off. There was nothing I
had to do: I didn’t have to work or
socialize or do errands or even talk on the phone. I was going out at six-thirty to a New Year’s
Eve event, but that was so late in the day it didn’t count. (In fact it gave me something to look forward
to at the end of the day without interrupting the day.)
I’d made a point
of keeping the whole day clear because I knew I needed it, for two
reasons: One, there were some things I
wanted to do in my house and I also wanted to spend more time than usual with my
writing. And two, I needed a stretch of
time – I could feel this somewhere deep inside my body – where I didn’t have to do anything, time where some
part of me that feels crunched and rushed and obligated could stretch out and lollygag
and expand.
So I took the day off,
and I had high hopes for it. Mostly my
hopes were attached to having that open, spacious, there’s-more-than-enough-time-for-everything
feeling. (This is what harnessing time is all about for me. It’s about feeling at least as much as doing:
I want to feel calm, spacious, peaceful, and present in the moment, and I don’t
want to feel anxious, rushed, overwhelmed, and crowded with stuff I have to do
and thoughts about stuff I have to do -- no matter how much I do or don’t have
to do. And I also want to harness my time to do whatever I need to
do. I find that it’s an endlessly
fascinating pursuit, because there’s always something
that can get in the way of that peaceful spacious feeling, and therefore there are
always things to learn.)
When I sat down to
plan my day, on this day I had off, I felt my mood starting to slip a little. I started debating: How much time should I put into the
writing? How much time should I spend
puttering in my house? Would I have
enough time to do both as well as time to lollygag around. I also remembered a few little things that I did
need to do, on top of focusing on my writing and working in my house – I’ve
been wanting to research a natural health issue on the internet for somebody I
love, there’s something I need to read for a new coaching client, et cetera. Right away I started losing that feeling of
spaciousness that I wanted and that I had imagined having on this day off.
I
planned my day the way I always do, and that helped quite a lot. I decided to clean up the house, do yoga, put
together a standing desk I’d bought from Office Depot, and do some other
puttering as well upstairs in my study (I thought that putting the desk
together would be a form of puttering), from ten to one. Then I would eat lunch and write (and maybe
research that stuff on the internet) from one to four. I gave myself extra time for everything (so, for
instance, instead of giving myself an hour to putter I gave myself two and a
half hours), which I thought would increase my sense of spaciousness. And it did increase my sense of spaciousness
when I was making the plan.
I
ran into trouble when I started trying to put together the desk that I had
bought from Office Depot. What I had
imagined as a fun, satisfying home project if only I had enough time for it,
turned out to be a frustrating, irritating, and futile time-eating pit. (Of course – I should have known that would
happen.) I managed to screw on one
caster but could have spent infinity turning the screw to attach the second
caster without the screw tightening. I
decided to bring the desk (it’s actually called a laptop stand – I want to do
some of my work standing up because new research shows that the less you sit
for long stretches of time the healthier you’re likely to be) back to the store
and have them put it together there for a small fee, which I knew they did with
furniture. But when I called to ask them
what they would charge and how late they were open, the guy said that they only
put together chairs at the store and that to put together a desk – even a cheap
flimsy little laptop stand like what I had bought – I would have to bring the
receipt to the store, arrange to have someone come to my house, and pay to have
them assemble the thing at my house.
They couldn’t tell me how much it was going to cost until I brought my
receipt to the store, but I could tell it wasn’t going to be cheap. By then I felt really annoyed, and I said,
“So it’s going to cost more than I paid for the &*(^%ing desk to get it put
together,” and the guy at the store told me in a bawling-out tone of voice that
there was no need to use bad language. I
hung up in a thoroughly foul mood. Then I spent at least an hour looking at
standing desks on Amazon – I wanted one that didn’t have to be assembled, and I
certainly wasn’t going to give any more money to Office Depot. I finally ordered something, then went back
on-line to try to figure out if what I had just ordered was going to be the
right height, and then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, I went back on-line
again, searched for and eventually ordered a floor mat that makes it easier on
your feet and back to work standing up.
So much for feeling like there’s enough time for everything, for
expanding into emptiness, silence, and spaciousness.
Finally
I sat down at my desk and wrote. It
felt good to be doing that, and afterwards I made my potluck salad and went to
my New Year’s Eve event. I didn’t have
very high hopes for it – I went to the same thing last year and it wasn’t much
fun. But this year it was fun, even
though two people I’d been looking forward to seeing there had called during
the day to say they weren’t going to go.
I had no expectations at all and perhaps for that reason I was
pleasantly surprised. I even ended up
having a nice long talk with someone I probably wouldn’t have spoken to much if
my two friends had been there.
So what is there
to learn from all of this about harnessing time? I suppose it’s that life happens, things get
in the way of our best-laid plans, and maybe sometimes that’s not such a bad
thing. And even if it is a bad thing, there’s
always tomorrow. If we ended up feeling
irritated instead of spacious, we can always take another whack at spaciousness
-- tomorrow, or next week, or even right now.
And there’s always today, as imperfect as it may be. There’s always this moment, and the moment
after this one, and all the moments after that. Here at the beginning of this new year, we are
rich in moments – to use or not use, to revel in or rush through, to notice or
not see at all. It’s up to us to decide
how we want to use our time and spend our lives, and if we screw something up,
if life comes along and screws it up for us, we can always go back to the
standing desk and give it another try.
-- Mary Allen
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