In 2023, I'm Guarding My Time

It's a goal, not necessarily a resolution. (Does the difference matter?)

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

"You know how you look up one actor from a show to see how old they are, and then 45 minutes later you find yourself six Wikipedia pages deep in the biography of everyone who's ever appeared on that show?" I said to my sister recently.

I was driving and she was in the passenger seat, so I couldn't get a good look at her face, but I heard the bemusement in her voice. "Uh. No. I don't think I've ever done that." 

"Oh, come on. Don't tell me you never waste time on Internet rabbit holes."

"Not really," she admitted. "I'm not a nerd. But I play video games, and you don't. We just waste time differently, that's all."

I hadn't exactly planned to frame it as wasting time. But it's true– there's no real need for me to know how many movies Ty Burrell has been in. The fact may be mildly interesting for a few seconds, but it has no actual bearing on my life. Hard as it may be to admit, the majority of "fun facts" I peruse on the Internet (20 Weird Things You Didn't Know About Cats!) have the same amount of relevance to my existence: little to none.

With a second baby due in the spring, I've been thinking a lot about time management. I’m a stay-at-home mom taking college classes, and– obviously– I also write. Caring for my kids is my first priority, but I have a lot of other plates in the air these days, too. And though I’m not a huge fan of making grandiose New Year’s resolutions that dissolve into regret somewhere around January 10th, I do like the idea of setting adaptable goals. Acknowledging up front that I am no better focused/determined/equipped in 2023 to Do Everything I Didn’t Do in 2022 is a key element of being realistic and not succumbing to feelings of complete defeat when I inevitably mess up at some point. 

So in the new year, I'm going to do my best (read: not always succeed) to stay away from practices that waste my time. Even if they are good things in and of themselves, I’m going to try to be more discerning about practices, habits and forms of entertainment that don’t actually benefit me in any discernible way.

Marie Kondo sometimes gets a bad rap for her Tidying Up mantra, but her two primary organizational questions help weed out a lot of waste. She’s famous for asking if an item has a use, and if it sparks joy. If the answer to both those questions is “no,” then why keep it? This seems like a pretty good test to me, but I’ll add two more questions of my own. “Is this task going to be undone in a matter of moments?” (For example, am I sweeping the kitchen floor right before lunch? That seems a little pointless, even if it makes me feel accomplished and On Top of My Game for five minutes.) And, “Does it matter to anyone, including me?” (Really, this could apply to the kitchen floor at times, too.)

Resolutions (or more gently titled “goals”) against any frivolous endeavor have always seemed Puritanical and a little pathetic to me. (Or are those adjectives the same? Much to think about.) We are not creatures made only for drudgery and quantifiable work, after all. Rest, recreation, and the occasional dabble in the ridiculous is good for the soul. But as I try to make my moments count in this new year, I’m hoping to cease and desist from some of the following:

• reading a book I'm not enjoying (here’s where Marie Kondo comes in: does it have a use or spark joy? The former may be true– a class textbook, for example– even if the latter isn’t)

• cleaning frantically when I know things will get dirty again very shortly (hello, kitchen floor just before my toddler eats a cup of animal crackers!)

• arguing with strangers on the internet (especially the ones who can't even be bothered to read what they're trying to "refute"-- Just Say No in 2023 to people who comment on articles after only reading the headline)

• letting other people’s drama overtake my consciousness and compel me to dig around until I know all the details of whatever argument is taking precedence on social media today (who cares what nonsensical misogynistic statement is currently trending on Twitter? I’m not going to be able to change that dude’s mind, and devoting my limited energy to finding out exactly who said what to whom isn’t doing anyone any good)

• reading random Wikipedia articles when I have something else I need to finish first (note that caveat!). Knowledge just for knowledge’s sake isn't a bad thing. Sometimes I derive great joy from learning just for the sake of learning! I'm not aiming for ceaseless productivity. I just want to feel that I used my time wisely. Sometimes that will be for learning, and sometimes for work, sometimes just for the fun of it, and sometimes for relaxing. 

When I need to unwind, I want to do a better job of asking myself, “is this activity actually going to refresh me and make me feel relaxed, or heighten my anxiety?” I might kid myself that scrolling my Twitter feed is a way to decompress, but in reality I’ll feel a lot better if I watch an episode of Stargate: SG-1 with my husband. Letting go of less healthy coping mechanisms might actually give me more time to do things I truly enjoy in my spare time, rather than spending an hour on my phone and then ruefully realizing it’s too late at night to do anything else.

With a new little boy getting ready to join our family in late April or early May, six credits to complete in the spring semester, and the daily “liturgy of the ordinary” (man, that’s such a good book) waiting on my to-do list every morning, I’ve got to keep some kind of handle on my 24 hours if I want to get any writing done. But I’ve learned the hard way that when the rest of life is brimming full, forcing myself to keep to a writing schedule just makes me sad when I don’t meet my daily goals. So instead, I'd like to focus on cutting out the excess in other areas, and writing in the quiet time that remains.

Here’s to the quiet time that remains, and to everything else 2023 might bring. What are you resolving (or goal-setting), if anything, this year? I’d love to hear from you in the comments!

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P.S. I’d love to share some links to work I published in December, but the truth is I don’t have any. I did a fair bit of writing and had a small bit accepted, but nothing’s been shared yet. I’ll be back with that in February! In the meantime, some goodies from the archives…

Reading Out Loud to My Toddler Has Backfired Unexpectedly in I Should Write This Stuff Down (from 2021)

London Businessmen File Formal Complaint Against Ebenezer Scrooge in Jane Austen’s Wastebasket (from 2021)

And one of the most popular humor pieces I’ve ever written (borne of some serious sleep deprivation and a desperate attempt to find something funny in the situation), I’m a Baby Who Refuses to Nap and I Am Drunk On Power in Jane Austen’s Wastebasket (from 2020)