I Miss Quiet Time

In my day care days, I had one and a half hours that I carved out each babysitting day. Quiet Time. A time when the little ones napped, the older ones sat quietly and watched a movie and I ... had a quiet hour to savor.

The dull roar that was my day back then came to a halt at Quiet Time. I loved it. It was an hour or so that I had to 'regroup' and get through the rest of the day.

As the kids grew up and many went off to preschool, I ended up with some 'Quiet Times' all to myself (as the younger ones napped). Oh, what I could do with that time!

I exercised, I did my book keeping, I puttered with my projects, I read ... I did a wide array of things. It was all squeezed into that hour and a half that we called 'Quiet Time'.

I don't have Quiet Time any more. I don't have windows of time that have a defined beginning and end.

There is a lot of quiet in my life right now, but I don't appreciate it as much as I used to. Because there isn't that contrast, which makes the quiet so much sweeter.

I don't have pockets of time any more. I have long stretches of time. It's harder to dive into work when you know that you have 8 to 10 hours at your disposal. It's some how easier to think of it as "I wonder how much I can accomplish in 90 minutes?"

I am a racer. I try to beat the clock at what ever task I have in front of me. I wonder if I can beat my last 'score' or achievement is the back drop to my thinking. It doesn't seem to matter if it is a long highway drive, a book keeping task, a chapter that I'm working on at school or running errands. I'm 'racing' to see how fast I can do it. It breaks up the mundane, to try and find a way to challenge yourself when doing something you've done a million times before.

I like to speed through the mundane-ness of life so that I can be fully prepared to savor the time after that.

Lately, I've been missing that quality in my life.

I'm puttering through my days and accomplishing very little. I climbed a few small hills this past weekend, but nothing that gave me a great sense of accomplishment. Slowly but surely, I'm sure I will do what has to be done.

I'd rather race through that 90 minutes of time and see what I accomplished at the end of that small period.

I guess I'm going to have to find a way to trick myself into working at things for small segments of time. I think that my neck would appreciate that as well. Sitting at the computer for hours on end isn't healthy in any capacity.

It's time to shift my Quiet Time mentality into my Productive Time. 90 minutes. I wonder what I can accomplish during that time??