I used to be good at wasting time. In college, I lived by the motto, "Time you enjoyed wasting is not wasted time". –T.S. Eliot
Why study when you can hang out with friends? Why wake up early for class when you can sleep in (and your roommate will take good notes)?
Those days are over.
I can’t tell you the last time I had the luxury of wasting time. Between work, home, friends, (and now blogging) there isn’t a moment to spare. In fact, I have just the opposite problem. I actually feel guilty when I waste time.
I was sitting at the salon last week, and I was completely annoyed that my appointment was running 10 minutes late. A whole 10 minutes! I thought of what I could do with 10 minutes. I should have brought a book or better yet my laptop. I can write a whole blog in 10 minutes! (I should have prayed for 10 minutes, but I was too frustrated to pray.) Those 10 minutes were wasted, and I could never have them back.
Ok, maybe they weren’t completely wasted. Maybe I needed to slow down and clear my head for 10 minutes. But I couldn’t enjoy myself. I was too busy worrying about what I could have done, and 10 minutes passed me by.
If you’ve figured out how to actually enjoy wasting time without feeling guilty in a fast-paced world, I’m extremely envious. In my world, wasting time is a lost art (but one I eventually intend to regain)!
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1 comment:
I'm not very good at it either, Susan. If it's totally out of my control then I try to see the time as a gift. I don't sit down and read a magazine at home, so when an appointment is late I see that as a gift of time to just sit. Reflect, read, pray - I can do whatever with that time, but it's a nice interlude to the whirlwind of life I live each day. Sometimes I wonder if all the "busyness" contains a lot of wasted time, too? Our time here is too short to not be able to slow down and be in the moment. That's what I'm working on for myself.
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