I think a lot about wasting time, mostly because I think I waste a lot of my own time. My time-wasters are television (especially so-called reality shows, and blood-pressure destroying news shows). I’ve successfully cut down on both, but I realize I’ve still got an addictive personality for both types of shows and Internet feeds. I find if I just don’t start watching a certain show (one comes to mind: Real Housewives of anywhere new), the I don’t get hooked and it doesn’t bother me not to watch.
It’s a procrastination technique (or flaw) for me.
I remember I did it during the 9/11 attacks. I glued myself to the television 18 hours a day, watching the same video over and over again until those same images of planes crashing into and destroying two landmark buildings and killing thousands, are burned into my head. I wasted probably two months on those. Well, not wasted–I think I needed to understand what was happening and why. But, in the end, did I?
The most recent example is the Pandemic (COVID 2020 and 2021). I had two years in which I could have written a book or two and gotten them published, learned a foreign language, volunteered hours and hours of time, learned to bake break or whatever ….
I remember reading once that somebody was saying they couldn’t go back to school for that long-desired degree, because they’d be fifty by the time they were done. But they’d be fifty anyway. Just fifty with that long-desired degree.
The thing is, looking back, we didn’t know we had two years. We thought it would be over in weeks. None of us knew really. Except maybe Dr. Fauci. He warned us, didn’t he?
So, should I retrain myself to think that “this time of having extra time could go on forever?”
I know what I need to do: treat time as if it’s my most precious commodity. Because it is.
Now, excuse me, but I need to watch Little People, Big World.
Cheers