Time on my mind

My friend Steven poses a question on Facebook, “Does anybody know where I can buy some extra time?” Last week another friend told me, “God didn’t give me my house or my car; the only thing He gave me is my time. It’s up to me where I spend it and who I spend it with.”
Like money, you can’t have enough time. Unlike money, you can’t horde time. Both time and money can be saved and spent, given and taken, invested and wasted, stolen and redeemed.
Buying extra time involves money. You can pay someone to spend their time on your enterprise. You only get the extra time, though, if you are willing to take your hands off the outcome (micromanagers need not apply).
You can buy time with time, but not extra time. If you spend less time on one project, you can buy time for another project. But small efficiencies yield small gain. To buy real time involves hard choices and lifestyle changes. Making time to write is a good example.
Like a grazing cow, the time put into keeping a blog ultimately yields a product, but also produces a lot of questionable byproduct. Some of the result becomes manure that will nourish other endeavors and some merely pollutes the day with things left undone – like laundry, dinner preparation, bill paying, exercising – all good and necessary activities.
The multi-tasking that served me so well in my career no longer serves. Writing requires focus and abandon. Abandon hope of ticking much off the task list all ye who enter here. Perhaps this is the answer. To buy time, I must: a|ban∙don: 1. give up (something) completely or forever and 2. yield (myself) completely in unrestrained freedom of action or emotion.
This is the crossroads where it is possible to enter a creative flow and experience time standing still. Like Alice falling down the rabbit hole, strange and wonderful things happen, but then we emerge and the clock keeps ticking.
Here is the adventure. Give up something completely (for today). Give up something forever. Yield to one calling with abandon; limit the others completely (for today) or forever.