Not Missing My Watches

Time.

Everybody wants it; nobody has it.

Even with flexibility to plan my schedule, I often feel as though I have no time – no time to blog, no time to read, no time to clean, no time to pray.  However, that feeling of having little time is one based on very little fact.  The truth is, I do have time to do all those things, and more, especially if I am prioritizing my responsibilities, and maybe getting a little creative!

I have two watches – my regular, every day watch, and then my back-up watch.  I lost both a couple weeks ago.  I know they are somewhere around my house, but they are currently missing.  Usually, losing my watches would make me anxious, and I would be cranky and tearing the house apart until they had been found.

I was raised with the saying, “5 minutes early is on time, on time is late.”  I have applied that to my adulthood and motherhood, and have had some people in my life joke about how I am, “always on time.”  A couple years back, I was asked what makes me angry.  At the time, and still applicable today, my answer was, “having to repeat myself.”  In the last year, I have assessed the other times where my temper starts to wear thin, and my voice gets a little louder.  As a mom, running late also makes me angry – being late makes me scale the walls, have my head spin round, you get the idea…  So, losing my watches could have detrimental consequences to my mental and physical health, and to the atmosphere around my household.

Yet, this time, I don’t have my usual anxiety about my missing watches.

Instead, I am using this time to break the habit of living by the watch and by times.  I’m not completely eschewing schedules and times.  I am, however, reclaiming my schedule.  We still have appointments, commitments, and obligations, to which I will be on time.  On those days, I am relying heavily on checking my cellphone, or using the alarm function on my cellphone to indicate various stages of readiness to leave.

Yet, the unstructured days, where we don’t have to be somewhere, are days where my missing watches are remaining contentedly hidden.  This may have bitten me a couple times, when my husband has walked through the door and I have either forgotten to start dinner or am doing a mad-dash to finish dinner.  But, it’s all a learning process.

I am hoping this more laid-back approach to time helps me be a happier, more relaxed wife and mother, and teaches my children to have a healthy balance and respect for managing their time in the midst of crazy schedules.