Musings in late December

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        “It was late in December, the sky turned to snow. All round the day was           going down slow…night like a river beginning to flow. I felt the beat of my mind go drifting into time passages. Years go falling in the fading light. Time passages. Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight.”
 
I awoke way before dawn with this song playing in my head and a brief moment of panic propelled me out of bed.  So much to do and so little time!  The thought began to spin out of control as I considered how much time I’ve wasted during the past year spinning my wheels with little to show for it.

 
Only six days left to undo the clutter, the dregs of happy Christmas and get ready for the new year.  Time, where does it go.  I wish Jim Croce had explained how to keep it in a bottle.  (Another song that often invades my busy little monkey brain.)
 
We think seconds don’t count but they tick away into minutes, minutes into hours, and hours into days while I snack on Reese’s pieces.  My head begins to spin as I realize these days turn into weeks, months and years.
 
At age 70 we have lived the equivalent of about two billion, two hundred seven million, five hundred and twenty thousand seconds.
 
Wow.  You would have thought I could have gotten my windows washed with all that time.  But no, it goes back onto my New Years resolution list – the way it has for the past 14 years.  At least no one can see into the house to watch me murder time.
 
Consider the value of a few minutes:
 
  * Take one minute to wipe down your cellphone with rubbing alcohol. Most of us have no idea how many germs our phone is harboring, and we tend to not even think about it (perhaps this is for the best..) Ditto for remote for remote control.
  * Take two minutes to grab your entrance hall rug.  Take it outside and smack it against something – repeat.  Not only will it be clean but you have burned five calories and released some stress.  
*  Take three minutes to stand up, take a walk!  Repeat 10 times.  See? Exercise done and you can enjoy the rest of the day guilt-free. 
  * Take four minutes to tidy up that stack of unread mail on your desk.  I did that first thing and found an overdue Atmos bill on the best bottom of the file.  Those people are the worst about not giving procrastinators like me ample time to get around to it.  You get it one day and it’s due by Friday!
   * Take five minutes to open your junk drawer (you know you have one – everybody does) and spend 5 minutes pulling out anything you can see that should just go to the trash. Or, survey the contents and pull out stuff that belongs in the toolbox and put it back where it belongs.  (This actually took me six minutes because I couldn’t find the tool box.)
 
Now, take the rest of the day and do nothing.  Doing nothing is a skill I have honed to perfection.  But after considering all the time wasting I performed in 2017, I’m toying with the idea of going back to work.  Perhaps I’ll start up an online politically incorrect and completely unreliable but highly entertaining newspaper for Baby Boomers.
 

5 thoughts on “Musings in late December”

  4. Hey Mike, Doug gave me a glowing report on your new digs, I expect an invitation in the new year. Glad to have you back closer to home! Maybe we can meet at T’Okata – get Linda, Kathy and Mike to join us. Doug and I met the Batson’s for lunch yesterday and laughed our heads off recalling our early Christmases in Prentiss.

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