Sigh.

Or maybe it’s: breath.  Yeah, that feels better.

Today was a breathing day.

As full-time working parents, we are very much operating on scheduled time.  Yes, time.  Set the clocks forward, backward, it doesn’t matter; there’s never enough of it in the day and it is very much the one thing in life that is finite.  It cannot be earned, produced, or replicated.  We have no idea how much of it we have to ‘spend’, as bleak as that may sound, and so we pack events, tasks, chores, whatever we can, into the small amount that we know we have.  With all of that in mind – random events suck.  Whether it’s getting a flat on the way to work, testing positive for COVID the day before the first concert you’ve been to since becoming a parent,  the basement flooding because, well, why not, or leaving the door to the chicken coop open, allowing a weasel to sneak in so that you now need to deal with the carnage before the kids start asking why the little McNugget family is sleeping so perfectly still.  Whatever the wrench is that’s thrown into the mix, it messes everything up and creative thinking needs to kick in.   In theory it would be great to build some timing contingency into all plans, but in practice that’s just not realistic.  Sometimes, however, time can swing the other way and give you moments, minutes or opportunities that make you feel as though you’ve somehow gained back some of those inopportune hours spent doing the things you wish you didn’t have to.  Today felt like that.

Complaining about being bored, is, well, boring.  I admit to getting restless and that I suffer from what my lovely wife refers to as ‘project brain’.  Give me five minutes of relaxation and I start to go batty; “Surely there is something I could be doing!” I think to myself.  That doesn’t mean I’m bored, it just means I’m feeling like my time could be used for more productive things.  Somewhere in this house, I’m certain, there’s a wall that needs painting, a shingle that needs replacing, or a room that I could demolish, reframe and turn into a yoga studio, income property, or prep-kitchen for my yet-to-be-realized in home cooking school.  Yeah, sitting on the couch is not boring, it’s just not the best use of my time.  It’s also fleeting; the moment I think I have time is the same moment one of the girls calls my name, “Daddy, I need help, I got the remote control car stuck in my hair.”  At the same time as feeling equal parts frustrated by having to address it and amazement at how one achieves such feat, I am also grateful to be serving a purpose that won’t cause my wife to shake her head at the fact that I’ve knocked down yet another wall or laid the foundation for a new and ‘much needed’ tool shed.  Still, that type of time is not what’s got me rambling today.  Today, without planning and without consequence, I found myself inserted into a work day without a single meeting, where the only accountability I had was to show up on time and turn out the lights when I leave.  And that. Never. Happens.

It’s a sad reality that most of us spend more time in meetings discussing the things we want and need to do than we spend actually executing those plans.  Be they in person or virtual, the terms ‘slammed’, ‘back-to-backs’, ‘swamped’ and the most concerning: ‘overwhelmed’, are all too common these days, each in their own right representing the state of our calendars for which we seemingly have little control.  We foresee a window in which we can grab a quick snack, a pee break, or the ever-elusive: lunch!  That window closes quickly, however, when our internal chat system starts blowing up and we find ourselves in the midst of a fire we didn’t start, yet somehow reached our department and we need to find a way to snuff it out before things get critical.  So, you set down the cheese string you packed earlier that morning when you were feeling nostalgic for the time when lunch time meant lunch time, and you answer the call.  The kicker to all of that is this ’emergency’ not only didn’t care about your lunch time, it also showed no regard for the meeting you had booked in the afternoon, which now need to be re-scheduled, throwing the whole universe off its course.  Sigh.

No.  wait.  Breath.  Earlier I said, ‘breath’.  So let’s breath.

The life of always being on call and available to each and every moment is not a sustainable way to live.  No one is capable of giving endlessly.  Whether that’s at work, home or anywhere in between.  that cup will eventually empty and the more you need to go back to the well to refill it, the more that well will dry and before you know it, well, time is up.  Having lived this experience for so long, I started to question the notion of contingency I mentioned earlier.  No one can control the impacts of time, but I can certainly stake some claim on a part the equation.  I purposefully block time in my calendar; time whose only purpose is me.  I say this is purposeful because by making it so, I’m not left to question what else I could be doing.  I don’t need to think about it being used to remodel the house or tend to the needs of others because it is already being used for its very particular purpose: me.  It is my time to eat, for self-care, to act on the things I said I would and, sometimes, to just sit and think.  Be it organizing my thoughts from whatever event occurred just before, or feeding the appetite I’ve let starve for so long, the time is mine.  The time to think. The time to ease my worried mind.  Time to have time.

I’ve gotten into the healthy habit, supported by my incredibly encouraging partner in this life, of not just carving out time during my work day but also in my personal time.  I take my Monday evenings, while Girl’s Squad is in full swing, to myself.  A time for blogging, hiking, exploring food, whatever, there are a few hours in my week that are now wonderfully dedicated, guilt-free, to me.  There are weeks in which I don’t entirely know what to do with myself, which is great part is kind of the point; for all of the time I give or is taken, this one evening in the week, or the hour I carve out of my work day, is time for which I am in control and I’ve been able to somehow manifest to…breath.  Just breath.

And so I will.

And I you can too.