Time Control

I've felt at the mercy of time this last week.

I'm not fond of the feeling.

The feeling of arriving at Sunday night and having your life managed for you by events outside of your control is not a good one. To leave on Friday evening and think "I put that much time in at work!" is not a gratifying one either. To realize how little you actually got to do truly important things can be a bit depressing.

Sometimes it seems that life, especially modern life, is conspiring at all times to suck the marrow out of every spare second that we have. There is something wrong with the concept of having to measure activity in terms of seconds spent doing something.

Am I arguing against planning your time? Not at all -in fact, that is one of the things I need to aspire to become a little bit better at. The reality is that we are all given precisely 24 hours a day. Every day. That's we have to invest, to use, to waste.

But what I am arguing for is some sense of us taking control of our time, rather than our time being taken control of by individuals and circumstances who view us as a line item in their calenders, a resource to be used by others rather than using our time as a resource for ourselves. Given free reign, individuals and circumstances will completely use every available moment of our time, thank us for our "contribution" and then move on, leaving us to wonder why we feel so tired and worked so hard and have so little to show for it.

Time: Are you controlling it, or is it controlling you?