
Lately, my relationship with time has been changing. A few months ago, I left my full-time day job so that I could devote more of my time and focus to my art and jewelry. When I worked my 9 to 5 job, time was a constant source of frustration. I never felt like I had enough of it inside my job to get all my work done or outside my job to do what I loved to do: be creative and be with friends once in a while. I longed to free up more time, especially for my creativity.
When I finally left my job, I expected to feel this immense time-frantic weight lift. Strangely, it did not, and I still find myself wishing there were more hours in the day and another day in the week so I could be in my studio longer getting more done. What I'm learning for myself is that, as long as there are things to do, I will always feel like I could use more time. I know others have the opposite struggle of not knowing how to fill the hours of the day. But for me, I'll always long for more time and wish I didn't need to sleep so that I could have more waking hours.
So in recognizing that my frustration with time has not changed despite the change in my life situation, I realize that I need to work on my relationship with time. I'm trying a few things to do this:
- trying to be patient and not get irritated when I'm interrupted from doing something I'm determined to keep working on or get finished
- not work while I'm eating a meal
- taking a little time each day to do something healthy (that my mind says I don't have time for), like going for a walk or playing piano
- stopping work in the late afternoon so that I can spend some time making a meal to share with my husband
- going to bed at a somewhat consistent time so that I'm not tempted to keep working or playing into the wee hours