Time: The Great Equalizer

As I sit here writing this post at 11:21pm, time is on the forefront of my mind. Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about time; about how fast time flies, about how crazy it is that it is August…..about how quickly Little C seems to grow. I can’t believe that come November I will have a three year old! Blows my mind. I’ve also been ruminating on how there never seems to be enough time in the day to do everything – I’m always scrambling from one thing to the next trying to make up time, get more time, use my time to the fullest. Recently a friend of mine said something that really rang true for me. She said “The only thing in life that we all are given an equal amount of is time, and it’s up to us how we want to use it.” Each day we have the same number of hours as everyone else. When people say “I just don’t have the time”, especially when it comes to their health or happiness, I want to remind them of this fact, that the time is there if they look for it. Granted there are things we all have to do (work, doctor appointments, etc.) and those things eat up time but I believe that we all have the ability to create time in our day to day lives if we so choose.  In my personal experience, if I really truly WANT to do something, I will make it work; I will find the time, create the time, and anyone else can do the same.

Once I had Little C I really had to rethink how I spent my time and restructured just about everything in my life…it was a massive adjustment. Before Little C, I worked out at night after work, I slept in on the weekends (sometimes until noon), and I shopped for groceries whenever the mood struck me. But once the babe was born, everything changed. EVERYTHING. I could no longer work out at night, the mommy guilt just from being away from her ate away at me and the idea of spending even more time away from her felt scary and selfish and bad. I could no longer sleep in (obviously), and shopping for groceries became a stressful and epic adventure that had to be carefully planned out. But I know myself and I knew that there were things that I needed to do to stay happy and mentally sound. So I found time. Now I go to the gym for physical therapy each day on my lunch break, and I never stop DOING. Even when I’m “resting” I’m doing something, selling on ebay, cleaning, planning, organizing. And when I came to the realization last October that I had lost a large part of myself in the process of becoming a mother I decided to do something for ME, which also meant something to dedicate time to: this blog.

To be honest I don’t think that I realized how much work it would be to have a blog-and had I known I wonder sometimes whether I would have still gone ahead with it. Working full-time and being a mom is hard enough and certainly time consuming, and there are times when I think that I’m probably a bit crazy for continuing to do it. Then I have to remind myself that I get so much out of blogging, that it has helped me grow and heal and change. People often ask when I find the time to do the blog and my answer is always the same: at night. Every night Sunday through Thursday once Little C is in bed and all of the nightly chores have been done (feeding the cats and cleaning their litter box, packing her lunch for preschool, putting my things together for the next day, etc.) I sit down and I write. I write and think and muse, I edit photos and search for links. Sometimes I don’t make it to bed until 2am, because once I start something I want to do it to the best of my ability. Thank you A-type personality…ugh.

ANYWAYS. My point is this: if you want to do something, you find a way to make it happen. When you start to tell yourself that you just don’t have the time to go to the gym or cook a healthy meal or take ten minutes out of the day to meditate and center yourself, just remember that we all have the time. The time is there, all you have to do is look for it. Make the time for you. Savor it. Time flies.