It’s that time again! I’m not sure how many years I’ve done a January Time Tracking Challenge but it’s been a while now. [OK: I just looked it up and I believe the first year was 2016, which makes sense as that was the first January during which I was tracking my time continuously. So hey, the challenge is 10 years old!]
If you’re participating, awesome. If you still need a time log, you can download one here (scroll down to the second step, and then choose your format. Note: If choosing Google Sheets, make sure to choose “make a copy” and then download to your own Google Drive.).
I think it’s helpful to see where the time really goes. This year I’m going to be tracking my work hours in more detail as I think these can use a tune-up. I want to make sure that the proportions look as I think they should look. I’m also paying attention to my “Golden Hours” — those post-work, pre-bed hours that can be hard to use well. As part of that, I have set an intention for tonight: 30 minutes on my new puzzle, and 15 minutes playing the piano (my 6-year-old needs to practice, so I’ll play after him perhaps).
Oh, and I’ll be blogging tonight, since as part of this challenge I post my time logs here each day. So if you want to see where my time goes, please visit frequently. I generally post in both narrative form and then will copy (with some editing!) what goes on my log.
This morning I archived last week’s log and reflected on it. On Monday last week I was flying home from Ecuador — kind of crazy to have started my 168 hours there! There was a lot of other cool stuff too, from getting together with friends, to celebrating birthdays.
Then I opened a new log and started filling that in. I was struck, as I always am, that the next 168 hours are currently blank. They will be filled with something. Eventually we will be on the other side of the next 168 hours. But what those hours are filled with are at least partly up to all of us. So let’s see where the time goes!
In the meantime…it was nice to have a “home” and “normal” weekend after all the holiday madness and travel. But this weekend is always a full one anyway. On Friday I went to my choir’s annual Twelfth Night party. I left early as we had some kid driving to do (the 16-year-old was doing tech for his school’s one act plays), but my husband and I did manage to grab a quick dinner together as well.
On Saturday morning I met a friend to run. We ran for about an hour on the trail and then we were standing outside our cars chatting when I asked if we could move the chat over to a nearby McDonalds, so we went there for coffee and felt much warmer. It was a nice addition to the run! My daughter and I did some gift bag assembly, then went to the library (on my goals list: regular visits there) and to Starbucks. I started a puzzle and drove people around. In the evening we made a family visit to Olive Garden. Our trip to the one near Dutch Wonderland over Thanksgiving had been so nice that we thought maybe we could recreate it but the one near our house was having some issues. We waited for an hour for our food and the salad didn’t have any peppers! Alas. It was OK since the kids are all older than 6 now (and they have those devices at the table so my 6-year-old could play Plants vs. Zombies) but we are thinking maybe we’ll drive half an hour to a farther away one next time.
On Sunday I picked up my 6-year-old’s cake from the local grocery store at 8 a.m. It was…large. But this was because the party was also going to be large. I’ve been hosting children’s birthday parties for a great many years and especially for little kids I generally invite the whole class and I say that siblings can come too — I know, personally, that this can be helpful for young families! I had in my head a certain percentage of people who would say yes, based on past experience, but we blew that out of the water this time, even though the party was at the same time as the Eagles game (I didn’t know the playoff schedule obviously when I scheduled it as that was just set last week). With my 2 little guys we were going to wind up with 28 kids there at Urban Air.
So, big cake. I went to church choir, and came home and got 2 of the kids. The day was tightly scheduled and the service was shockingly long. The reason was that my choir director is retiring after 43 years (!) at the church. So there were tributes, and he did a long-ish Messian postlude that everyone sat and listened to, so the music was amazing (including what we sang: Cantique de Jean Racine, and the 4th movement of the Brahms Requiem, plus two choral Amens that we have commissioned from Malcolm Archer and Craig Phillips) but we also got out of a 10:00 service at 11:35, which is not typical Presbyterian scheduling. I ran to get the kids, we high-tailed it home, my daughter managed to change in 3 minutes, and I pulled into the tennis parking lot at 11:58 for her noon tennis lesson. I was very proud of us.
I went for a walk during the lesson. Meanwhile, my husband was driving the 10-year-old to a playdate and the 16-year-old to a study session. We came home from tennis and I got a nice hour (ha) to sit before it was time to load the car for the party. I took the 6-year-old with me to get the 10-year-old (my husband was driving the 16-year-old home and then he came to meet us).
Meanwhile, there was a sudden hailstorm. I have no idea what happened but as we were pulling into the parking lot of Urban Air there was hail coming down, and when I opened the car door there were huge gusts of wind. I was carrying the giant cake in when the top blew off, right into my face! I was literally walking into Urban Air with the plastic top pressed against my face. Fortunately the cake wound up with only a small ding (and my coat has frosting on it…) but wow.
The party was slightly overwhelming as these things often are, but the kids seemed to have a good time. Plus they had the Eagles game on in our party room, so people could stop by and watch it (even if the game did not turn out well). We played for a long time, came home around 6:30 and opened presents. All this stimulus had strange effects — the 10-year-old fell asleep in his bed before 8 p.m. (this never happens) and the 6-year-old was wired looking at a new SpongeBob book well past 10. I fell asleep and my husband dealt with it.
Anyway, now it is on to a new week! I’ll be blogging tonight about how I spent today. If you’re participating in the challenge, you might identify 3-4 times you’ll write down how you have spent the past few hours. I promise it is not that hard!
