land of time and plenty.

On vacation, I decided that I would be a lot happier if I parceled out my free time with scheduled activities. "I'm sorry, Mother, I cannot come for a visit, as I am to read a book of my choice from 6:00 pm to 7:15 pm and then loll about humming from 7:15-7:30 and then use the toilet before penning deeply philosophical thoughts from 7:38 pm to 9:00 pm bed time."

I decided to call it a time budget.

This time budget is also part of my COFFEE project--a collaborative blog experiment with 9 other women in which we've all chosen projects that scare or challenge us in some way, and we blog about the process of completing that task. That's here. http://coffeeisanacronym.blogspot.com (It's still developing, and we're in the first round of posts, which is a learning process. So please forgive our rough seams.) My project is to sing and play guitar in front of strangers. This requires regular guitar practice to minimize the suckage. Regular guitar practice requires time. … Time budget.

Other things I don't make time for: writing (the real kind), reading (non work related materials), writing letters (that require stamps), playing the piano (no parenthetical notation required), art projects (that require paint or pastels or cutting and pasting), and meditation (so I can stop this anxious breathing thing that has returned. 1000 times a day I am telling myself, "You're fine. You can breathe. Just breathe. Relax. There. Breath. See?" I will need to write this into my time budget. "Drop your shoulders. Breathe.")

I think it's ironic that I made this decision while laying on the beach in Florida. But what I know of myself is that if I have a lot of free time, I will waste a lot of free time. And I also think I know that sometimes to free yourself from something requires a plan, and sometimes plans look like schedules. So if I am going to free myself from shameful stagnancy, I need a plan.

I started the time budget 2 days ago, got overwhelmed, and quit (How to Be a Smashing Success by Patresa Hartman).

Yesterday, I picked it up and got to work. I learned: I can't do everything. I wake up at 4:30 a.m. to go to the gym 4 of 5 work mornings. By the time I get home from work at 5:15, I have about 4 hours to work with. There must be eating and canine carousing and packing gym bags for the next day and husband time and picking up after myself and using the toilet. I end up with about 1.5 hours to write, read, play guitar, meditate, and paint. It's so depressingly confining, and I just can't figure how to make this work. My head feels like it's going to explode.

It's a problem with proportions.

On vacation, I was in a place I loved, doing things that made my soul happy, and I felt so… right, so lined up. I thought of a million ways I could make this life my reality. I could run away to work with sea turtles. I could live like a bum. I could write sonnets for cash. Over dinner, C looked at me and said, "We need to make sure we do this at least once every other year." And it occurred to me how completely absurd that was. For 5 days every 2 years do something you really love? What?!

Likewise, I am looking at my time budget… For 1.5 hours every 24 hours, do something you really love! Huh?!

Obviously, I know the secret is to FIND what you love, MAKE what you love, BRING what you love, to the other 22.5 hours and to the other 725 days. And I'm usually pretty good at doing that. I have a great job that allows a surprising amount of creativity (even if the environment is kind of soul sucking). But when you look at it in really cold terms, we (most of us) are seriously f'd up with how we have constructed our lives. Totally out of proportion and off-balance. No wonder there's so much chronic illness and depression. How could we expect to be healthy?

And furthermore, how do we have time to keep reproducing? Holy cow. I'm looking at my time budget and thinking there is not possibly enough time for babies. I simply cannot have children with this kind of schedule. Who has time for babies?