Time management

Someone told me recently that if I managed my time differently, I would be able to get in more leisure and fun activities and so more rest. That would give me more time to de-stress and that, in turn, could lead to a reduction in the speed at which the world spun. Of course, to explain to my advisor that the world did not spin, I did, and that the vertigo that has been bothering me for too long was not about anything spinning, but a nasty feeling of disorientation and unbalance that left me not just bewildered but exhausted as well, seemed futile. Instead, I decided that I did need to figure out what was taking up so much of my time and leaving me in a state that was, to say the least, most unpleasant.

So I sat down by myself and did an audit. My personal life was stressful, I agreed, but not enough to get me all discombobulated and funny-headed. Food was perhaps my greatest concern, since cooking was something I insisted I would do, for the most part, since I truly enjoyed it and found it such a cathartic process. You could, for instance, cry happily into that pile of onions you were chopping without anyone being wiser to the fact of the matter that you were genuinely crying with grief and/or pain and/or frustration and/or whatever else may make you cry. You could take out all those pent-up emotions about everything from the boyfriend to the parent to the boss to the lack of brilliant red nail-polish in the market on a heap of beans or a haystack of shredded cabbage. Or you could get rid of all that suppressed anger and irritation as you pushed fresh garlic through the press and produced wonderful smells into the tiny puddle of extra virgin olive oil in your non-stick pan.

That was my Sunday morning sorted out. The rest of the week was more about heating up and finishing dishes that meant a few minutes of work while chatting with Father or Small Cat.

My commute was, for all purposes, about comfort. I did not need to drive myself – in fact, I was expressly forbidden to do so – and I knew my driver and his habits well enough not to be affected by any idiosyncracies or traffic snarls we may encounter. And all the noises that our ageing car made were part of the consciousness that I was in a place I knew. While sometimes the drive took longer than I wanted and I was completely focussed on getting home rather than hanging about waiting for the lights to change or for the thick stream of cars to move forward to wherever they were going that was on our trajectory, I knew that I would get there sooner or later, and without being muddies by splatters from passing vehicles or being squashed into a corner of an overcrowded compartment on an over-late train.

So that was my travel sorted out. I knew where I was going and how and even approximately how long it would take me to get there. The comfort levels were a given…or taken, and that was fine by me and mine.

That left just one more factor that was a constant that affected a major part of my life. Work. Was I comfortable with that? Was it the kind of work I wanted to do? Was it the sort of job I was happy with? Was it the kind of job that was happy with me? I sat down to think….and still am.