My Week: Hour By Hour

This was a pretty terrifying little project I did.

I broke down my week by hours. You see, people are always saying "I don't have tiiiiiime" for this or that, but what they're really saying is "I have the time but I'd rather spend it on... something else".

Well, knowledge is power, and I want to know *exactly* where I'm spending my hours. So, I got out my calculator.

7 days x 24 hours = 168 hours per week. Sounds like a lot of hours, I guess. (?)

Now, I'm an "8 to 9 hours of sleep a night" person. So that takes away between 56 and 63 hours a week. We'll average at 60. (During the school year, this number WILL decrease!)

Work is about 50 hours, currently, between my various occupations. Including commute time, though, it goes up to about 54.

I kept track of meals, and I only spend about 1 hour a day eating! Shocking, I know.

Then there's the whole... "getting ready" thing. I spent about a half-hour to an hour getting ready in the morning, and it's about the same for my wind-down routine at night, which consists of brushing my teeth, scrubbing off mascara, and probably falling asleep in the bathtub. So, we'll just round up to about 2 hours a day for "essential routine activity".

There are a few other scheduled things that take time out of my week - a weekly ladies' group I have takes up about 3 hours including commute, writing on my blog each week is about two hours (on average), and... well... those are all I can think of right now.

SO. Eating, sleeping, driving, working, writing, and beautifying all take up about 122 hours!

That leaves me with the cracks - 46 hours!

I spent 46 hours this week on things that I can't even remember. A lot of Netflix, bumming around, walking through Target for the heck of it, maybe playing with my dog, but probably mostly scrolling through some internet world or another.

I HAVE A FULL TIME JOB (WITH. OVERTIME.) IN WASTING TIME!

Gap time, I've started to think of it as. It's as if I have 46 hours of "loose change" from the other ways I spend time, but UNLIKE money, loose time doesn't add up in a corner for you to combine and spend later. IT DISAPPEARS! Immediately! Unless you use it the moment it's presented to you.

So - gap time. Those 5 or 6 hours I have after work, those few hours in the morning, even those 20 minutes between jobs... what am I spending that precious currency on?

Sometimes, yes, I'll spend allllll the rest of my loose change from a day on an evening with friends. I'll use it to tidy up. To work on projects (like my wardrobe project, which, by the way, is going SO WELL!). Sometimes, it's very valuable to spend my time in conversation or just resting on my porch, depending on what I need that day for my own sanity.

But oftentimes, I'm wasting it. I did *NOT* break down the amount of time I spend on (cue horror movie soundtrack) SOCIAL MEDIA but GOLLY I bet it's a frightening amount.

See, folks, Sarah Kane has had a rude awakening that THIS (by this, I mean, THIS! *spreads arms to encompass her surroundings*) is my LIFE! THIS RIGHT NOW! ME RIGHT NOW!

When I was 14 I had these nice little images of myself when I was 21: a classy, energetic lady tearing through college and saving her money and reading a lot of good books and practicing piano daily and using a great vocabulary and probably finishing the next great American novel and also supporting 3 Compassion kids! All while looking incredible in a tailored jacket and balayage highlights. (Duh.)

Well. That girl... doesn't exist. YET. While I do think I'm well on my way to being someone my 14 year old self is proud of, I'm definitely not there yet. And the point of this post is not to complain, whine, or be derogatory towards myself - of course I'm never going to look, act, or be as "perfect" in reality as I fantasize. And this isn't a post that says "I suck and need to change!" because self-loathing is definitely not in season.

But.

Friendly reminder to self: the person I am is a product of how I spend my time - and I want to keep growing into this lovely person I think I can be! That means I have to be a bit of a tight-spender when it comes to my time, because the older I get, the easier it is for me to get lost in a "life routine" and lose track of that loose change, and that loose change can prove to be the most valuable when it comes to investing in my future self.

This coming week, I'm going to be a more conscious time-spender. I've started carrying a book in my purse, and reaching for that instead of social media as a way to fill those little loose dimes of time. I've started calling friends in the evenings instead of watching their lives through a screen. Because really, ultimately, those 60 hours I spend sleeping and 40 hours I spend working AREN'T what make my life my life. Everyone does "life": working, sleeping, eating... It's what I do in my unstructured time that determines how I choose to live.