I needed more time.
Especially since the time change, there just hadn't seemed to be enough hours in the day. Sure, we'd been getting our school work and house work done, but there was just not enough time for doing nothing, and well, I needed more time for.... nothing!
When I think back to just 5 years ago, there was always time. So much everyday that I'd find myself wondering what I could do to busy myself until Jon came home from work. We were still homeschooling, so that can't be used as an excuse, because we could get our work done and still take a walk to the grocery store for dinner ingredients with time to spare.
It's likely the same thing that prevents you from finding more "me time," more time for stillness, contemplation, reading, being.
It's social media, and it's something that I'm ok with admitting I struggle with. I have a love hate relationship with social media. Facebook used to be so great for staying connected to far away family, old friends, and people from across the country that you met on your honeymoon and now get to watch their children grow up.
Instagram has been awesome for peeping into peoples beautiful (albeit sometimes made up) lives and imagining how lovely it must be to bake pies from scratch using organic ingredients from your garden out back of your cliff top house in Switzerland (you know what I'm talking about....).
But let's be real. They are time sucks, and it's so hard to avoid them.
Even with notifications turned off on my phone, I'll check in to facebook, and before I know it, 20 minutes have gone by and I haven't even interacted with anyone I know.
But I've watched a video of Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake, seen someone complaining about the president, seen 10 cat pictures, more complaining about the president, complaining about the people complaining about the president, found out what my Fairy Princess name is, taken a quiz to see what type of shoes I would be if I were a pair of shoes, and so on and so on and so on until I've wasted all of that precious time I was looking for earlier.
Sure, it doesn't always happen in a large chunk like that. Sometimes, I check in a few times a day for little nuggets of nothingness here and there, because, that's what it is, nothingness. I haven't actually retained anything from that video recipe for making caramel apple streudel that I watched for 8 minutes.
Anddddd there's my precious time.
That's where it went.
That's why I've been reading the same (actually really fascinating) book for a month and am still at page 104.
I've decided I don't want to live like that anymore. I'm tired of wasting time on scrolling that I could be using on things I really care about (ie. reading, gardening, crafting, learning), so I decided I was going to make a concentrated effort to find myself more time in 2018 by deleting my personal facebook account.
I'm on day 2, and while I have noticed a slight compulsion to reach for my phone, only to realize mid-grab that there are no notifications to check, I'm already feeling much happier.
Yesterday, we found the time to have family movie night, color gorgeous meditative coloring pages of wolves for the Wolf Moon, and the Hubs and I even enjoyed a cup of eggnog and read our books (yes, real books - no phones needed) by the fireside together after the kids went to bed. It was heaven!
This combined with the return of the light now that solstice has passed, and my head is spinning with all the possibilities of what I will do with my new found time each day!
Is there anything you've let go of for the new year?
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