Out of Time

Hello Friends.

I've been fascinated lately by productivity, and how it relates to what we create and what we consume. Recently, for instance, I listened to a 10 part BBC Radio drama series about a family. It was soap opera-esque, but funny too, and the same writers and cast recorded installments intermittently between 1997 and 2011. I devoured each episode during my commute and downloaded a new one to my ipod almost daily, until I ran out of episodes. Instead of being satisfied with this funny, moving, gripping series, I was almost immediately angry that there wasn't more. "2011?" I thought. "That was three years ago! Come on, people, let's get cracking on some more! I'm bored now!"

Similarly, my new job prizes quick turnaround as much if not more that content. If I can write a good press release in an hour or a great press release in a day, they'd prefer the good press release in an hour, thank you. I don't mind this preference because I tend to work better under pressure and the tighter the deadline, the better I'll perform. As I have just twenty minutes between the end of my work day at job one and the transit to catch and dinner to eat before job two, I wonder how quickly I can crank out quality work.

Dream: Do everything faster.

Goal: Achievable. There are some things I can get done really quickly. A big sandwich, for instance, or a shower at the gym. I don't fuck around and don't need to spend time on this activity. Stands to reason, then, that the same principles can be applied elsewhere.

Plan: Cut corners on the following activities:

Getting ready in the morning. Oh man, they call it the break of dawn because that time of day is broken. Here's what I still can't master about the early rise: a shower that's not a frozen or boiling death cleanse, a breakfast that is a complete breakfast, and making it out the door on time. I've tried showering the night before but for some reason if I start the day without a shower, I look like a homeless prostitute. Right now, I can fry an egg during the time I toast my toast, but I can't savour my coffee like I like. I guess I should slamajam a RedBull with a handful of Honey Nut Cheerios.

Laundry. What at time-waster! Our laundry room has been shut down for over a week because of reports of a gas leak. If true, that's sort of hilarious because if there's gas leaking into the building, perhaps more is at stake than our laundry room, but whatever. Anyway, they've got the washing machines back up, finally, but not the dryers. We washed two loads of laundry, then found every available surface in our apartment and laid our clothes flat. There are wet pajamas on the couch, wet socks in the cupboards, wet underpants in the mail slot (not really, that's gross). It made for a hoarder-looking few days, but everything is dry now and all we had to do was render our apartment inhospitable, which is already kind of is.

This blog. Time ticks away on my free Thursday and while I had hoped to post an entry I've been working on for awhile, I realized I left that draft at home and didn't email it to myself to access from my office over lunch (I usually pack sandwiches for lunch but to save time today, I just threw in some crackers, olives, and a chocolate Santa from 2011).

Truthfully, I'm angry at myself for not being a better life-planner. Now that I have a more consistent schedule, I'm hoping to finally take a yoga class, learn to use my slow-cooker, and get that weird mole looked at. 

Instead, I find myself cutting corners on important things, and devoting too much time to the useless (like Facebook, why can't I stop with the Facebook?). For now, though, a dashed missive before I pack up, and the hope that someday soon, I'll cram quality of life into a quantity of time.