27^th Aug 2014_1

I’ve stopped doing what I was doing to type these thoughts. Whether or not I have the time to do this is another thing. But I have a strange relationship with time.

Let’s face it, we’re all getting older wonder where it went. Perhaps time, if it even exists, didn’t go anywhere. We did! That’s enough of the relativity. This is about my experience of time and whether I make, or have made (I haven’t!) the best use of it. And will typing this help me? I have no idea, but the thoughts are leaving my head, instead of bouncing around in there with all my other unanswered questions, and demons.

I race triathlons. The purpose of which is to go as fast as I can and finish in the quickest time that my body and equipment purchased will let me. To go faster I need to devote time to training. But there is a balance. Experience tells me that hours of extra training may only make me go a couple of minutes faster. That’s hours of training for something that looks like a small return. I could be sleeping, or doing all the great things I never get round to doing.

Of course, by saying never I never get round to do the cool things I could be doing instead. The problem is that I need time to think about these things. Time to think is a completely different thing. We all need time to relax and let our brains process the previous day’s experiences. To me, that is time well spent. To others, laziness.

One of the problems of modern life is all the distractions. We have mobile phones, TV, social media, work mobile phones, and remote working. Even if my work phone isn’t ringing it is there and there is part of my brain dedicated to the chance that it might. At the moment, it doesn’t ring very much. That breeds anxiety about my future time left in my work, and adds more pressure on the time I have at work. But if I don’t take the time to stop and think, things will only get worse. Then I must act on my thoughts, most of which will be about job security, and not about doing the fun stuff in life.

All of which leads to a blurring of time. Gone are the days of 8 hours at work, 8 hours free time, and 8 hours sleep in a working day. Not only is lunch for whimps, but so too is sleep. And sleep is the most important of the 8 hours.

Then there are time thieves, but that’s for another day.