I am getting so flicking fat! Since I got sick three months ago, I’ve put on six or seven pounds, an unheard-of thickening. Was already overweight, so an extra slug of poundage really does put me in the “fat” category.
Why? Well, besides the fact that for about a week or ten days all I could gag down was ice cream.
As a practical matter, I’ve gone on ice-cream binges before and never gained an ounce. IMHO, the why behind this predicament is bone-laziness, loafing in front of the computer all day long. I mean, really: how long does it take to write a blog post? An hour, at the outside? Two blog posts a day should take one a couple hours, maybe three at the outside. Yet I seem to spend so much time at my desk that I don’t clean house, I don’t get any exercise, I don’t take care of the yard, and I often don’t bother to fix a decent meal for myself. No wonder I’m turning into a barrel of lard.
Woke up at 4:00 this morning wondering what on earth I do with all my time and why on earth I can’t seem to get off my duff long enough to waddle around the block with the dog. After all, I’m normally up by 5:00 a.m. and go to bed around 9:00 p.m. That’s 16 hours of consciousness a day, seven days a week: 112 potentially useful hours a week.
In 112 hours, I can’t find time to get a few minutes of exercise? I can’t dust the furniture or scrub the floors? WTF???
So, if I were to add up all the things I routinely need to do, how much of that 112 hours would they really absorb?
Hmm… So, about 20 to 30 hours a week are occupied in productive activities. Add in class time and driving time, about 8 hours a week, and we still aren’t occupying all of 40 hours. Out of 112 available hours.
Well, then: what AM i doing to waste the remaining 74 to 84 hours a week?
• Playing Mahjong and other computer games
• Reading news on the Net
• Surfing and commenting on websites (I probably spend as much time writing at other people’s sites as I do on my own)
• Surfing the Web
• Eating
• Driving around
That is a lot of time to kill diddling around with a computer. And what am I neglecting while wasting all this time?
Health: not exercising, not eating well
Could be doing:
• Walking, biking, hiking
• Cooking and storing healthy meals
Social life
Could be doing:
• Inviting friends over
• Socalizing
• Volunteering
Cleanliness
Could be doing:
• Cleaning house at least once a week
• Cleaning car
• Cleaning garage
• Taking better care of self and appearance
• Keeping windows, window coverings, fans, & lights clean
Writing e-books
Could be doing:
• Scheduling specific periods to compile e-books
• Marketing business
Could be doing:
• Joining groups, making presentations
• Working marketing campaigns
Huh! So, what should I, could I do that I’m not doing now? Not on a regular basis, or not in any organized way?
Bookkeeping: 1-2 hours/week
Exercise: 1-2 hours/day: 7-14 hours/week
Clean house: 2-3 hours/week
Blog: limit to 2 hours/day, 6 days/week: 12 hours/week
Teaching: 8 hours/week
Yard care: ca. 30 min./day: 3.5 hours/week
Shopping: about 2-3 hours/week
SBA/PPP: 3 hours/week (+ driving time)
Read news: limit to 1 hour/day: 7 hours/week
Market business: 10-20 hours/week
Learn real estate: ca. 3 hours/week over next 7 weeks
Cooking: 1.5 hours/day: 10.5 hours/week
How would this shake out, if I could actually organize my time to comprise all these activities on a regular basis?
This would occupy 53 to 75 hours a week of the 112 hours during which I’m awake and reasonably conscious. And that would leave 37 to 59 hours a week to loaf. And get in 7 to 14 hours a day of exercise!
{Sigh} I need to get organized. I need to spend as much time and thought on budgeting my time as I do on budgeting my money!
Oh, man, can I relate to this. I’d be scared to keep a time blog. Every once in a while, it occurs to me: this is my life I’m frittering away. And then I make lists like yours and schedules. And then I feel overwhelmingly pressured and don’t do any of it. Seems like there’s a motivation issue here somewhere, but damned if I can find the key. I always enjoy your blog, please keep it in your schedule
This is exactly how I’m beginning to feel about myself too. This week, I’ve been thinking a great deal about the hows and whys of changing my life. I’m still decluttering because I want to be able to speedily clean my house but still clean it properly ~ I’ve been very successful at this goal. I want to be able to do so many other things with the life I have left and it seems that creating minimalism is definitely the way to go for the spouse and me. That, and confining random internet reading to just a couple of hours a day at most. Difficult!
Ironically, I came to this same conclusion very recently as well. My life is out of balance. I know how to work, but I know little about maintaining my health, enriching my life in other ways that don’t involve worrying about budgets and projecting numbers (no matter how gleefully I take to these tasks), and maintaining regular social connections. I’m doing something about that now.
My suggestion is to start small. It’s taken me a month to get it in gear, but I meet with a handful of other adjuncts once a week on Wednesdays for coffee and bitching.
IT’S GREAT. I can’t believe I haven’t been doing this all along.
I’ve also figured out — and this may very well apply to you — that there are just some concessions I’m going to admit to about the way I live my life. Would I love to be cooking from scratch all the time, eating organic foods and planning all my brown bag lunches? Of course. But it ain’t happening yet. What is happening is I’m skipping lunch or running late so I ditch breakfast or some other equally boneheaded maneuver. So, I bought a box of Honeynut Cheerios cereal bars, tiny flavored-tuna-and-cracker combos, some “shove water in it and microwave” Asian noodle boxes and some cook-and-carry soups and away I went. Is it healthy? No. Lol. But I’m eating regularly, grazing even.
Small steps. And those Asian noodle boxes are pretty damn tasty!
@jesinalbuquerque, Quest, and BudgetGlamorous: 🙂 Nice to know I’m not alone in these strange-sounding sentiments!
Ditto the discovery that enough is enough with the cook-from-scratch chow. If I can’t put it on the grill (ALL of it), half the time I don’t feel like bothering. Roasting a whole bunch of veggies in the oven worked pretty well…a weekend day gave plenty of time for letting cut-up stuff sit there and cook, and it’s REALLY nice to have veggies all ready to go, any time you like. One weekend’s worth of mad roasting provided enough side dishes (and sometimes main dishes) to last two weeks. Today I grabbed the cabbage/apple/onion mixture out of the fridge for lunch. Worked just fine with some canned sardines and a couple of crackers.
I draw the line a bit before Cheerios cereal bars, but there has just GOTTA be edible foodoids that can go in the microwave or not have to be cooked at all.
Bought a box of individually wrapped burritos at the Costco; had one of those for dinner tonight. That outfit has a surprising amount of “natural” and “organic” chow mixed in amongst the junk food. You have to read the labels, but without too much difficulty you can find prepared things that are free of unpronounceable ingredients. In a refrigerator bin (not one of the freezers) I found lamb shanks cooked, amazingly, sous vide. They REALLY are delicious served over rice or pasta with a salad or veggies on the side. Takes about three or four minutes to heat one in the micro.
Also, Safeway’s answer to “organic” — the stuff that’s branded with a large green O — includes a few prepared things. Anything that purports to be “ethnic” and “organic” is usually not too awful…it’s hard to ruin Mexican food.
You can find stuff like that at Trader Joe’s, too, although I’ve had some pretty dreadful fake Asian food from their freezers. Whole Foods: same, at higher cost.
I definitely relate to this as well. I have a lot of free hours this week especially, and I should do more to exercise (among other things).