Reprioritizing Time

     The trick to writing boils down to one word: discipline. Every writer I know has a formula. It was a favorite topic in radio days past to ask their secret. The rituals are as varied as the individuals themselves, but the one common denominator every successful artist shares is a strict approach to discipline when it comes to time management.

     It was a thing I totally miscalculated when moving back to the farm, after all, structuring your days around you should be heaven on earth, right? Well, it's not hell, but it's likewise not easy, for country life comes with its own pace and its own challenges, particularly when it comes to this thing called time.
     For starters there are chores. Don't get me wrong; I love chores. There is something very soothing about mindlessly washing a bowl while pondering a book idea or listening to a lecture on tape while scrubbing the stove. Challenge is some days I can get so blissfully into mindless that I look up 2 hours later and find the cabinets rearranged and the silver polished as well.
    The counter to this is miscalculating the time it takes for smaller tasks. I'm the worst at pegging something for 5 minutes, when it realistically takes 25. I'm bad to wash one more bowl, when I should be in my car by now, then...Opps! Still got to pack the car! (That's 20 minutes, Evins, not 2).

     But now there's a new layer of challenge to things... Something beyond merely getting out the door...and that is time for meaningful.
     The first year was a struggle. I had not applied the law of supply and demand to the notion that "If you're going to take on a garden here...you're going to have to give up something there." After all, I came to the game with a full plate already. Add to that plate, and you gotta take something off.
    Year two, I moved things around, rearranging the plate...I clustered my meetings so more got done each venture out. I grouped things in a more orderly way. Still, I botched it when it came to certain times of the season (like harvesting) which I underestimated. I literally left food on the vine, and that drove me bonkers. I couldn't pick things fast enough and what I did pick, I couldn't pickle, process or give away quickly enough.
    By year three, I braced... I cut way back to make time for wells and barns so I might simplify my life down the read...But what about the time it costs me now? I had to cut somewhere.
     True, most of us consider things that breathe life into our days as "expendable"...If we've got to cut corners, we often cut those we can least afford to cut.
     But as we know, life doesn't work that way. Time waits on no one. Yes, I get a lot done; but the things I long to give my attention to go deeper than the floors and counters. I woke up one morning wondering "Why this hint of silent discontent? What's prompting this inner angst I've been ignoring?" Then it dawned on me. I was postponing the very thing that makes for the soul of human life....

      My number one stresser in my little farm experiment is all I cannot do. I love the launch of a new project. I thrive on the joy of a deadline. I adore the process itself. But when I stopped to think of what makes it worthwhile, the answer was clear: moments make the memories. Without these, all the deadlines, projects and processes in the world have no meaning.
      I stopped this week to take note of what's going on beyond my front door...What's happening with people I love? My week began with the funeral of a man I admired and a world of people as precious....people I'd not seen in years. One friend is battling depression; another is facing foreclosure. One is fighting (and beating) cancer. One is contemplating a run for office. One friend is about to move...another is recovering from surgery. These are seriously HUGE events happening to my seriously wonderful friends. There is something way out of whack if I'm not working to find a way to clear any obstacle that might keep me from being fully present for those who matter most.
      It's work to overhaul an entire way of thinking, especially one that has produced a fair amount of results... but slowly I'm starting to recognize that life as I once knew it, is about to change.

I don't know how it'll take place. I only know that it must. If the next 20 go as fast as the last, heaven help. These moments...these minutes in my days don't only bless my life, they ARE my life. Now is the time to consider how best I invest what time I have, with love, with forethought... with intention.
     Little by little...a small shift is taking place: a conversation here, a lunch appointment there and guess what? No goats got neglected, no pup went without. (To the contrary, everyone got doubly loved when friends came to visit and puppies found homes).
     Does it bother me the laundry is backing up? Yes. Does it mean eventually I'll have to give up something else? For sure. But there is no ironed shirt to compare with the feeling of seeing a little girl beam as she names her puppy Fluffy...No countertop comes close to picking cucumbers with a friend fighting cancer.  I'll gladly take a dusty floor to be present in these moments.
     To choose what can and cannot wait requires discipline and discernment,  and some days I'm better at this than others; but the good news is it's a start. But as is always the case when it comes to change, the first step is awareness, and that I have in spades.
     Mastering time management won't happen overnight. But at least I know what matters. And if I'm serious about clearing space for the meaningful, then no doubt it's time to let go of the not-so-meaningful in order to have it.
      ~Life is too short not to.