Temporal Music

I'm finding that I am increasingly frustrated with myself - no, more precisely, frustrated with my situation. I was lamenting to Silverline yesterday that with the change in schedule, it feels like I have less time to accomplish everything that I need to do. "What do you mean?" she replied? "You have the same amount of time, just shifted."

"I know that in theory" was my reply, "it just suddenly feels like there is less time, not more. I take my time in 15 and 20 minutes driblets."

Starting anything is always difficult, not matter what. Trying to start something - in my case, a job or career change - when you feel your time has evaporated feels like you are pushing a heavy rock up a hill like: every time you think you are making progress or even stop to take rest, the rock slips back on you.

Or is this an illusion? Has time always been this limited, this precious - and only now that I need every second of it do I see it?

It some ways it has become the dominating factor of my life. I can now tell you, within 5 minute intervals, what I have worked on at work and how much a percentage of my day it has been. Likewise, I can tell you all the chunks of time - excluding family - that I have spent during the times I am not at work.

I find this a hideous way to live. One's life becomes controlled by the clock and minutes. I start shaving minutes off of lunch, begrudging people the time to talk, becomomg incensed that I do not "accomplish" all that I need to do. Interestingly, the more I track time, the less I realize I am accomplishing - not because of the tracking itself, but rather that the opportunity cost of time is made blindingly clear: by doing X, I am not doing Y. And Y does not go away, it is just assumed that it will be accomplished with "extra" time.

How do I break free of this tyranny of the clock, the chains of the temporal music which with regularity fill my day? How do I begin the process of starting - or restarting - that which is truly most important when the very seconds themselves seem to mock my attempts?

I do not know. All I know is that time has suddenly become infinitely more precious to me, and the thought of wasting on things of lesser value has become increasingly more painful. My life needs to become dominated by the march of the important, not the lesser tunes of the time fillers.