Here we go!

Welcome to the thousands of folks who signed up to track their time this week! (You can still join, but if you sign up after 6 a.m. tomorrow you’ll be coming in during the middle of the email sequence). I hope you find the experience enlightening. Not in an “oh dear” sort of way, but in an “oh, isn’t that interesting?” sort of way. Most of us don’t really know where the time goes, because it keeps passing no matter what we do. Mindfulness helps us make choices, and being able to make wise choices frees us to do amazing things.

Anyway, I can see on my time logs that it has been 168 hours since I got home from London with my three older kids. This week wasn’t as intense as London, for sure, but we did a lot. I celebrated my 3-year-old’s birthday at his school (during an uncommonly warm day, so we could eat our cupcakes outside!). I went to my choir’s Twelfth Night party. My husband and I had a hot date to Wegmans supermarket. Yep, we went with no kids and when you’ve been married 18+ years and have five children, any solo time feels memorable.

And my little adventure for the week? Going to the local Christmas Tree Burn. An Episcopal church in my neighborhood collected trees, and brought in the local fire department to create a bonfire. (Kind of fitting, not just since the fire department could manage a bonfire safely, but they sell Christmas trees as a fundraiser, so I’m guessing 90 percent of the trees in the fire started in their sale lot…) It was quite the sight — and a novel way to end the weekend.

I will be back tomorrow with my time logs (my time log week starts Monday at 5 a.m.). It should be a fairly normal workday, but as many time-trackers will discover, there are no typical weeks. We take life as it comes! Here’s to seeing where the next 168 hours go.