The Lie I Keep Telling

 

Iâ??m busy.

Thatâ??s itâ?¦thatâ??s the lie.

You know what though, everyone says it all the time. Iâ??m busy or Iâ??m too busy or Iâ??m so busyâ?¦some variation of it but we all say it. Although I imagine marijuana smokers donâ??t say it, but I digress.

Donâ??t get me wrong, I think a lot of us are busy but the problem is that much of what we are â??busyâ? with is â??busynessâ?. We busy ourselves with checking email too often, checking Facebook or Twitter too often, playing stupid games on our phones, or watching TV.  

So hereâ??s my problemâ?¦four days a week I work from home and take care of Sammy. Due to my personality (and my depression) if I am not productive I can slide into the abyss, and I still have not reached the point where I view having Sammy as â??being productiveâ?. My urge is to be productive in the sense of working to make money, writing, continuing to paint the inside of our house, or whatever happens to be on my current to-do list.

Itâ??s been tough to balance my thoughts on this. I feel guilty when I am not being productive but I also know that spending time with Sammy and enjoying the fact that I have the privilege of being home with him is important. Some days I have had the ability to â??let goâ? or â??give inâ? to this miracle in life and mentally walk away from workâ?¦other times I am not so fortunate.

I know I can get work done but it needs to be in the morning before he wakes up, at his nap times, when Annie gets home from work to take over with him, or on weekends when Annie is around to take care of him the bulk of the time but even this knowledge does not always calm my thoughts. Itâ??s a work in progress for sure but I hope I can get a better grasp of it before I lose the appreciation of this time with Sammy and before I lose patience with not being productive.

Some people have told me that taking care of Sammy is being productive but as I said earlier my brain canâ??t quite compute it that way yet. I attach a lot of value and worth to being productive. If I donâ??t accomplish things on my list, exercise, or write I tend to lose my pearly white smile and head into the dungeon of doom. Thatâ??s the rub; that is what I am in the process of facing and reconfiguring. I think Iâ??ll be able to do it and I hope I will be able to for Sammyâ??s sake and my own.

As I stated in the beginning of this article, we get busy with busyness and thatâ??s one angle I am starting to address. In a sense I have started doing a â??time auditâ? to see where and how I am spending my time. There is very little TV watching anymore and Iâ??m really trying to focus in on productivity when I have those spaces away from Sammy. The time audit is proof to me that I can cure this issue I have. When you really begin dissecting your day itâ??s pretty incredible how many wasted minutes and hours there are.

Once you see this you can start taking your life back from the clutches of the dreaded time suck. I think we owe that to ourselves and those around us. I think we all feel better when we are productive, accomplishing things, and able to spend times on those things we enjoyâ?¦which in turn will make those around us happier because we are happier.

What are your time management secrets?

We shall see what happens next but for now I continue down this path.