Time – Notes For My Kids

My wife was with my mother visiting the 4-H county fair in my hometown. There was a sign in front of one of the major animal exhibits that said “4-Hers Only”. My mother, who has not been in 4-H since she was 18 years old, confidently walked past the gate, much to the shock and amazement of both my wife and sister.

It’s not because my mother was feeling defiant or entitled to a closer look at the livestock.

It’s because deep down she believes she is still 12 years old.

When my daughter asks my mother to tell a story, it’s always from when she was a young girl–something she did with her sisters. She still looks at my uncles as toddlers or young boys who need care.

I’m throwing around this theory that most of us get frozen at a particular mental age. The example of my mother (who is a fantastic and very mature adult), is just the first one that got me started.

I told my theory to my wife, who is simultaneously fixed at 18 and 35. She often uses the phrase, “I was really good at that in high school,” which sparks the idea that she will always be at the cusp of anything she wanted–fearless, with the entire world open to her. She’s also been recognized as being “very mature for her age” and has been a consistent and trusted voice, even for people who are older than her. Even in her 20s, she naturally leaned towards those in their mid 30s. She is at her best as the mother of 8-16 year olds–kids who still need a lot of physical affection, but who also need a bit of snark and self-awareness to get going and see the realities of this world.

My father has been about 85 for the last 25 years at least. He is incurably nostalgic, reflecting on the good old days, and just kind of waiting around to die. That said, when he was coming out of anesthesia after a knee surgery, he went straight to being 17, playing basketball with his neighborhood friends.

My wife’s parents are probably 25 and 23, just starting off a brand new life, limitless energy, the best intentions, room to make mistakes, and excited about what might happen next.

I am 43–finally beyond the age when I need to impress anyone. I’ve reached the age where I can thumb my nose at the powers that be, knowing well enough that the worst they can do isn’t that bad. I’m old enough to have seen things and be confident in the general way the world works. Yet, young enough to give something one last great push and bring something into being that wasn’t there.

Your mental age is the filter through which you see all of your life, and your ongoing surroundings.

What age do you see yourself as?

I love the feeling of efficiently using my time.

I realized some time ago that I rarely do anything I am proud of after 9pm. It mostly goes to “treating” myself with a movie, or piddling around on the internet, or not doing much at all. So, because you guys like sleeping with a “grownup”, I go to bed with you guys sometime around 8:30pm-9:30pm.

I set my alarm for 7.5 hours from when I sleep. If I get less, I start to feel very tired throughout the day. But, I notice very little effect from more sleep unless I am sick. So, that means I am up around 4:45 or 5:00am.

I start my work day at 6am, which means I have some time to make breakfast, shower, shave, do laundry, read, etc. beforehand.

For my primary job (financially speaking), I put in time from 6am to 1pm, fitting in some time for lunch. For the other two or three things I do, I give them an hour between 1pm and 2pm, alternating on different days of the week. Finally, I take care of loose ends*, administrative stuff, and emails from 2pm to 2:30pm and by 2:30pm I start my time with you guys. (*These loose ends are the biggest time suck for me, so after much struggle, I finally put all these things at the end of the day so I can’t get distracted by them earlier.)

We spend the afternoon together while Mama works on other things. We usually eat around 6pm or so, and then enjoy the rest of the evening until bedtime.

This is my ideal schedule; I still waste a lot of time here and there, but this is who I strive to be.

When it comes to wasting time, I’ve realized a few things.

Time spent with you is never wasted. Every moment we spend together is well worth the time. This morning, my alarm had gone off and I was ready to go, but A rolled over with her heat-seeking body and wanted to cuddle more. Despite me really wanting to get to writing, I stayed in bed for a while. I’ve never regretted a second of time that I gave to you guys and you are always worth me stopping what I’m doing and being with you.

Someone is going to get cheated. You can set up your ideal schedule, but something is going to happen to throw it out of whack. Stuff at work will start to overflow. A family crisis will happen. Someone will ask for a special favor. Someone will really need time from you that you had allocated to something else.

I really like some advice I read earlier which says in these situations, you need to decide ahead of time who is going to get cheated. For example, if I’m in the middle of work, and Mama comes in with an emergency, or really needs something, then I will cheat my work and attend to what she needs. The same for one of you guys – if you need something, I will cheat time away from my work to give it to you. Sometimes work asks me to cheat time away from you all. If it’s reasonable, I’ll check with you first and see if you are ok with it. Otherwise, I won’t do it.

Daily waste. There’s a much different feeling between looking back on a day and feeling like you wasted it, and looking back on a year and feeling it was wasted. Here, I mostly mean that feeling of looking back and thinking, “Wow, I did nothing worthwhile today/this week/this year”. Getting this feeling over the course of a day for me usually comes if I were to watch a lot of TV or surfing the internet (I can remember watching 3 football games in one Sunday and feeling like this), or otherwise sitting around. It’s that feeling of being 4pm and realizing you haven’t showered and are still wearing what you wore to be the night before – just feeling a bit disgusted with yourself. [Since having kids, there’s always something to do with you guys, so I rarely feel this anymore]. That daily feeling of wasting time is a good reminder, or kick in the pants to not fall into those traps of letting someone else tell you what to do next (like the television or a Youtube channel), but rather deciding for yourself.

Big picture waste. The other feeling of looking back on a year and thinking, “Man, I didn’t really do much this year,” is much worse. You might have 29,000 days in your life, so not being proud of how you spent one of them is not such a big deal. But if you only have 80 years or less, each one means a lot.

This is feeling like nothing you did mattered in the long run. You worked, you made money, you did what you were supposed to, but life was just going through the motions rather than actually worth living. In my view, the best way to combat this feeling is to 1. Set goals for yourself (I’m not great at this, but I hear it’s a good thing), 2. Get serious about the traditions you want to keep and protect for you and your family, and 3. Build time for serving others into your daily/weekly routine. More on these things in other articles.

Doing something once a week/month can change your life. It’s amazing the rhythms that are built into our lives as a result of nature – days, months, seasons, years. I’ve found that if I commit to doing something once a week, or even once a month, although that is a very small commitment, over the course of a long period of time, it adds up very quickly. This blog is an example, I decided to write something every Saturday morning. I have it on my plan to write a note to a friend once a month. We want to have a family date at Soho every week. I’d like to go downtown to the homeless ministry at least once every other week. Mama teaches English once in a week. These small drips really add up to something very significant over time. If you feel like you are wasting time, don’t try to fix it all at once. Just a small commitment that you keep and honor over a very long time, adds up to something really amazing.

Time is a precious resource, and one we should budget more than we do our finances.

Notes For My Kids

Category: Time

Your Fixed Mental Age

Wasting Time

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