On Not Having Enough Time

Jaco’s latest post struck me as quite poignant, mostly since I’ve been thinking about this myself. Our blog update pact also means I needed to post an update, so I’m taking the easy way out and jumping on his idea. I do try to honor my commitments, and so I’m posting this in a sense to make a commitment to myself to try and pick up certain things again and give them some attention in my down time. Really my lack of down time is the main cause of the problem, but if I can constructively organize and use my down time effectively, I hope I can get back to these things. So without any further delay, here’s a list of the things I hope to get back to, and some explanation behind them.

1. Piano. Yes, I have a piano here. It is currently sitting under two weeks worth of stuff that needed a place to rest and never got moved. This is a testament to the problem in fact. The real sadness is that, like Jaco’s drawing, this is something I’ve been doing my whole life which I have let atrophe. Sure I play about once a month, but I haven’t learned a new classical piece in years. I’ve written a few songs in the interim, and grown from it a bit, but I really need to hunker down and learn something new and challenging, and hone this skill.
2. Drums. This is compounded by the fact that my drumset is with my parrents in Harrisburg, since there’s no way I could get away with having it in my apartment, and practice space is far too expensive. I do, however, have a practice pad up here, so at least I could be brushing up on some rudiments and rebuilding my chops. This is also something I’ve been doing most of my life that’s been ignored for too long. This will be helped by:
3. Exercise. Despite all evidence most of you have to the contrary, I was not always the fat bastard I am now. There was a time in my life when I was thin. Granted I was 5 and it was before I broke my leg and put on a bunch of weight, but it was still a time! All kidding aside, there was also a time in middle school/high school when I was thinner and on my way to being in shape. That ended for a reason I don’t recall, but mostly because I loathe most kinds of exercise. Still, at a point, enough is enough, and even if I’ll never be a skinny little white boy (which is a fact I’m proud of), I’d still like to be in shape and get some muscle tone and mass going.
4. Novel. Since NaNoWriMo ended, I have touched my novel all of once. Part of this was sheer exhaustion from actually managing to finish NaNo, and then there were some holidays and time with the family. Now, there’s school. Still, though, I’d like to finish the story, and then go back through it an see if it’s worth really putting time in to. NaNoEdMo is coming up, so hopefully that will help with getting back to it.
5. Flapper Punk. A mysterious project I am working on with Jaco, and which he has mentioned. I won’t tell you anymore about it because I don’t want to ruin the surprise. In the end, I simply have not had the time to get the background info we need done in order to start working on a story. We’ve been talking about doing something like this together for going on 8 years, so it’s high time I paid some more attention to it.
6. Guitar. This is the most common of my musical endeavors anymore, but I still am lucky if I pick it up weekly. I used to jam with people all the time, or learn new songs on my own. Anymore, I only jam once in a blue moon. Time to turn that around and get it back to the early days.
7. Song Writing. It’s been a year since I’ve written a new serious song (there was a joke song about a month ago, but I don’t count it as it took all of 20 minutes to slap together). That’s far too long, and I do miss the creative thrill of doing it. This goes hand in hand with:
8. Band. I haven’t been in a band since The Defenestrators in high school, despite years talking about putting one together. There might be something in the works on this though, so we’ll see if that pulls through. If not, I need to start something up.
9. Updating my Website. With the exception of this blog, I haven’t worked on my site in a while now. There’s a broken element on it, for godness’ sake. I have a bunch of content for it in the works, but haven’t had the time to build the pages. I need to get back on this and get it to a point where I can call it complete. There will always be changes to make, especially visually, and I’ll probably think of new things to add, but even some elements I originally intended to have are incomplete.
10. Romance. Bottom of the list, and something that has thankfully taken a back seat since the hormonal rollarcoaster that was high school. Truth be told, I’m genuinely happy being single. I have time to do my own thing. No one is relying on me for emotional support. I don’t have to tolerate someone bitching at me for no apparent reason. Bittern cynicism aside, there’s a lot of good fun in being in a realtionship, and there is something in having that sort of deep emotional tie with someone that I miss every now and then. Couple this with the fact that I know and continue to meet a lot of incredible women who remind me why I’m heterosexual in many different ways among them, and it seems as good a time as any to maybe start trying to get something going again. We’ll see, it’s at the bottom of the list for a reason.

So there it is. Here’s looking forward to finding the time and fostering the ambition to get these things going. For now though, it’s 4am, and it’s time to go to sleep so I can go be a real person and fulfill my real obligations.