Time Flies...Slowly

 

 

 

It is hard to believe that summer is over, school is started, and Halloween is just around the corner. It will be a mere matter of weeks and we'll be breaking all our New Year's lies, uh, resolutions. It's trite to say that time flies, so let's change it and say that time dashes...speeds...races... or even zooms.

Trite smite, let's stick with "time flies."

I am Day-Timer freak (my words), so addicted to scheduling that I even colour-code my monthly calendar My Day-Timer is bigger than my Bible, thicker than my journal, and neater than my planner. My family laughs at my insistence at going to Staples to get the next year's filler by late July.

Shifting to the country should have brought a nice change of pace, a slowing down from the rat race that marked life in BC's Lower Mainland. Or so I thought. This past year has been insane for us as a family. I cannot think of a cluster of months, going back many, many months, that I personally have been as run off my feet. Daughters getting married, sons working away from home, along with outside and inside chore demands (now re-adjusted because of marrying daughters and working sons no longer available) will do that every time.

And I believe there is a growing home school service, a large family, plus the upkeep on the seventy acres in there somewhere.

Because I wear so many different hats – writer, teacher, editor, speaker, facilitator – and each role is full with its respective demands, I cannot see this frenzied lifestyle slowing down in the near future. The main thing I can say, and I assume that you'll agree, is that busyness is good, so long as it is a productive busyness.

Generally speaking, upon being asked how things are going, the most correct, acceptable answer is: "Great. I'm really busy." Well, that is the right answer if it is a good busyness, but the wrong answer if it is a bad busyness.

How does one define "bad busyness"? That, my friends, is a loaded question. I think a simple rule of thumb is as follows: Am I driving or driven? "Driving" (good) means that, for the most part, I am in charge of the schedule and the demands; I set the direction and pace. "Driven" would be the inverse, namely, others set the agenda for my day and week, and, by extension, my life.

It's an imperfect world out there, and I admit that there are times when we are controlled by circumstances beyond ourselves. For myself, I have to be at Cherry Coulee at certain times on certain days; I have to make house calls during specific times of the year for my home school visits; I have to meet many deadlines on a regular, weekly basis (this column being a classic example).

As we get older (or better stated, mature), there will continue to be many voices that will clamour for our attention, but they will have to wait in line. Their demands will have to take a number, as it were. Relationships, hobbies, and time for reflection should become higher priorities. "No" may become the most over-used word in our vocabulary over the next few months, as in: "No, I can't join that board," and "No, I am not coming."

The strange irony in all of this is that we have more time-busting toys at our disposal than our parents ever had, yet we seem to have less time than they did. Our lives are easier but certainly busier, and I would posit that they are likely less productive in the things that really matter.

I wouldn't mind slowing down myself. Those long treks to Staples every summer are getting very tiring.