It's 9AM.
It’s the little things, I told her.
Like taking your clothes from the bathroom and putting them in the hamper by the washing machine.
I do that, she said.
You do, but he doesn’t.
#10 comes in from baseball practice and strips in the bathroom.
Turf shoes, practice jersey, knickers with one leg half inside out.
All balled up on the tile floor before he hops in for a shower.
Where they stay, along with other shoes and other shorts and other clothes.
Until I get them or she does.
I’ve tried to explain it more than once.
To both.
It takes me about one minute to gather up the dirty clothes and move them into the laundry room.
Maybe 90 seconds.
Another 30 to turn the pants inside out.
That’s not long, they argue.
But it is.
If you add it up.
Because it’s another minute to move the shoes.
And another minute to pick up the empty water bottles, or to do this one thing, or do that other thing.
A minute here, a minute there until thirty tasks have eaten up half an hour.
Or longer.
Because some things take more than the minute.
It’s simple fix, I’ve tried to explain.
And a good life lesson.
Pick up after yourself and show some consideration.
She said I was too obsessed with time management.
Besides, what would you do anyway?
A question I get a lot.
Because she might be right.
I spend a lot of time thinking about time.
Probably more than the minutes I spend doing a hundred little things.
I wonder what it is about my generation that is so obsessed with time management?
The Four Hour Work Week.
Time for work, time for play.
Taco time and quitting time.
Sowing time and a time to reap.
And reave.
Always time to reave and go Viking.
It probably has to do with being out of time.
Death waits for no man and sometimes he comes knocking when you least expect it.
I know that first hand.
One minute, everything is sunshine and gravy, and the next it’s heaven bound.
And what we leave behind is a big list of to do’s or to be done’s or wish I woulda done’s.
Maybe some tears.
Hopefully some tears.
Some tee shirt philosopher said “he who dies with the most toys wins.”
Except you can’t take it with you, so someone swoops in to buy your hard work at a steep discount.
Who wouldn’t want a boat for half price?!
Especially one you spent your time working to buy, working to insure, and working to ski or fish or just drink beer on the lake each weekend.
A trade off for your time, and energy and effort.
My trade off is trying.
Trying to finish a hundred of a best of one thousand ideas.
Plus fighting off the ten new ideas a day that pop into the mind.
All of it takes time and time is precious.
Which means saving time doing a long list of little things adds up to extra energy for the big stuff.
It’s all a trade off.
Spend time here means you can’t spend time there.
What it all boils down to is I don’t really like pulling pants right side in, or using the Shark to vacuum crumbled turf up from the bathroom floor.
I don’t think it’s a fair trade.
Except…
One time I read something about doing all things, even the most mundane and annoying and little, with a present mind.
About being in the moment, because that future I’m saving time for doesn’t exist, and the past time I’m complaining about is gone.
There is only here. Only now.
Picking up clothes and water bottles becomes a moment of gratitude that I have a family to clean up after.
A lesson I need to be reminded of.
Time after time.
Here’s to living for the moment and not for a tomorrow that doesn’t exist yet.
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Maybe listen to David Bowie's version of what time means.😁