Finding Time

 I am trying to find balance.

It is a thing I am sorry in need of at the moment.  Part of it, I have come to realize, is due to a lack of sleep - not so much volume (there is that) as it is sleeping through the night.  There is more often than not a dull zombified feeling as I go about my work day.  I certainly have not been the sharpest that I could be in the last 4 months or so.

But it seems beyond that as well.  As it turns out, I deal with change poorly (this, I knew).  What I did not know is that change would be forced upon me by default.  It has thus impacted my entire life.

I can try and schedule my hours out to the most minute degree, but the reality is  I do not work well that way.  I never have, really:  I am one of those people that does not do well rushed. I can do it - but like I have found in my workouts, it just becomes something I rush through to get it done, not to actually do it.

This rather large love of free range hours does not accord well with my current circumstances.

This seems to leave me with two options:  either accept that everything is going to be done poorly and rushed, or scale back things to my available time to do them.  And the first, it turns out, does not work.

Practically speaking, that means narrowing my focus on what I do.

The good news (if there is good news here) is that my schedule is pretty fixed at this point.  I know what days I have Iai class and what days I will most likely work at Produce (A)isle and when I am likely to leave my regular job. All of that reduces of the overall time, but it lets me know what I have available.  

The trick, it seems is adapting what I do to that.

What it has practically meant is stopping (hopefully temporarily?) a great many things. More things have become fewer things.  Fewer things have become things I can comfortably spend time on.

I am not thrilled by this development directly, although at some level I feel as if I have been smacked upside the head by God if for no other reason than my attentions have been scattered everywhere instead of in the places that matter (insert standard scattered light versus laser analogy here).  It has also meant giving myself the freedom to do some things less well or even not on the periodicity I would like and leave some time for, frankly, just having time.

Is this permanent?  I am not sure.  There is nothing that suggests the situation is going to correct itself in the near term.  And maybe that is okay:  perhaps I am at a time where that kind of focus really needs to happen for that core group of things I have identified.

After all, as the old saw goes, we cannot all do everything.