Time

Time is such a funny thing. We are told it is our most valuable resource, and I agree. It took my turning 40 to realize the true value of the time we have on this planet, made more precious given the state of things.
In conversations I have with people both in and outside my clinical work, how someone spends his/her/their time always comes up. I know people without work, without dependents, with all the time in the world at their disposal. I know people worked to the bone trying to reach a dream, or supporting someone else's. I know people who have chronic illness and most of their time is spent in physicians' offices or in recovery of some kind. I know people who have time, but do not know how to spend it and unstructured time is an opportunity for nightmares and distressing, intrusive thoughts to take hold.

I have never felt like I have had much free time. Before having children, most of my time was dedicated to school and work. This came at a significant cost to my developing important life skills like cooking for myself and having any hobbies. Since having children, this has only been exacerbated, and I count my lucky stars every day to be married to someone far more balanced than I am, who can look after the children and the household in ways I can not, or do not have the time for.
But where it was once acceptable to me to use school and work as an excuse for my incompetence at life and adulting, over this past year, it is no longer justifiable to me. My work, which I now realize is never ending, and can be deeply unrewarding and draining is no longer worth the hours away from family, the physical/emotional toll and the time required to recover from a particularly difficult day.
I now recognize that how I have spent my time so far has been in pursuit of a fantasy I believed I would achieve if I gave enough of myself to school and work. The hope was that I would reach a place of recognition, professional status and advancement that would somehow give me permission to stop working so hard and so much. I turned 40 (I can't help but feel this age has significance) and I appreciate now more than ever before, this fantasy does not exist. In my line of work, there is no reward for clinical excellence. There is no advancement for striving to be the very best psychiatrist. So, disheartened and more than a little disillusioned, I am re-evaluating and re-imagining my future and asking one of the most important questions we must all ask ourselves at some point: How do I want to spend my time?
If the dream you believed you were sacrificing for does not exist, what now?

Most of us have obligations that take up time and are non-negotiable. For example, if you have dependents, caring for them takes time. Work takes time. Sleep takes time. There may be some room to shuffle things around to optimize how this time is spent, but by and large, we are working with an average of 8 hours gone for sleep and another 8 hours gone for work on weekdays. I will also put a completely arbitrary 3-4 hours for other non-negotiables like commuting and eating. So I really am turning my attention to the remaining 4 hours in the day. At one glance it seems like both a little and a lot doesn't it?

I may be projecting my own experience onto others, in fact, I most definitely am, but I can't help but think this question of what we do with our time and more specifically our free time, as one of the most critical and unavoidable questions that only applies to the human species. Those that think less about this question either have lots of free time or none of it, or they are more enlightened than I am and feel very rewarded emotionally and spiritually with how they spend their time already. If you are in the latter group, well...good for you, I retort in a snippy tone. But no, seriously, good for you and you have something to teach the rest of us.

I have actively freed up time for myself, on a regular basis starting this year, 2024. First off, simply having regular, protected free time is a game-changer in what becomes possible with what you could do with that time. When you rely on free time just appearing out of chance (which I used to do, and an example of this might be say...a patient that does not show up for an appointment, or a playdate that takes your kids off your hands last minute), you can not be as thoughtful with this kind of time. The best I have been able to do in these moments apart from being eternally grateful, is to fit in some exercise, take a nap, or do some journaling. I justify these activities specifically because any exercise and sleep are always good when you don't do or have enough (like me), and, if it is not abundantly clear, this gal (me again), has endless amounts of feelings and thoughts to journal about.
Ironically, lots of my journaling is about how I wish I had more free time and what I would do with it. I read back to entries that wax on about how my life would be so much fuller if and when I learned a new language or could master the art of embroidery.

So what is vital for me, in using my free time well, is to have a reliable, regular amount of it. And this is hard to do for some of us. For me, it has been 7 years in the making ever since having my first child. I went back to work after my parental leave, part-time only to flex up to full-time in the extra shifts I covered. When I stopped doing this, I filled the time I was not working with extra courses and mentorship meetings to improve my knowledge and skills. So as of this year, 2024, at the seminal age of 40, do I hope (knock on wood) that I will be able to protect a reliable 8 hours of free time a week. I have given up taking over other people's shifts, and I have taken a break from continuous learning initiatives.

So what now? Now is the very daunting task of actually doing what I have been writing about for years. My journal has a chance of becoming a work of non-fiction! But in seriousness, it means choosing to take something on that I know I will be bad at, that may feel like a waste of time in the short term, and where gratification will be delayed if there at all. What is worth this process? What matters TO ME, not to anyone else, but ME?

So I am off on this journey, but not totally lost. I do have 40 years of living under my belt afterall. Here are some, dare I say, wisdom that will serve as my guides:

1) Social media, Youtube and the News are very toxic for me when it comes to feeling good about myself, so in those 8 hours of free time a week, it will also be 8 hours of being off-line the best I can.

2) As much as I have the longer-term in mind, it can be just as good to focus on the moment to moment. For example, a friend called me out of the blue while I was in the midst of my "Free time planning session" and it filled me with angst to be interrupted (I am insufferable, I know). But this is a very good friend I have not connected with in a while. So I took the call and it was time well-spent. My bucket was filled, I hadn't realized it was needing a top up until after the call ended.

3) I like to toil sometimes. Time well-spent for me is not only about "Follow your dreams!", "Be positive!", "Anything is possible!", "Reach for the stars!" But also about getting out of my head and doing some of the mindless tasks it takes to simply maintain a life that you have or want. Chores, house/lawn clean-up and maintenance, just boring stuff that reminds me I am not that important, I am not above or better than these things.

4) Protecting and maintaining free time cultivates a healthier relationship with myself. There is time for fun! There is time for failure and self-improvement (they are the same thing in my books). There is time for skill development and practice. There is time for self-reflection. Heaven forbid, there may even be... time to waste;).