For week twenty three of 52 Blogs we’re writing about spoons. Yes: spoons.
I chose the topic for this week’s 52 Blogs post. I claimed it was random, and it a sense it was – it was something I was randomly pondering at around the same time that I needed to come up with a topic. Serendipity, I believe it’s called. Or possibly just lack of focus…
Anyway, I’m pleased to see that my good friend Helen obliged by posting about the exact thing I was thinking about: read it here.
Now, I can’t claim chronic illness or anything more debilitating than having a few kids to deal with. However, I was pondering the spoons analogy when I realised I typically have a limited number of jobs I can get done in any given evening or weekend. I can maybe do two major tasks over a (good) weekend, such as mow the lawn or give one of the rooms a really good tidy. There are the unavoidable tasks that just have to be done: shopping, cooking, bathing the kids, and so on. Then there are the minor, optional tasks: frivolous things like sorting out the media library, watching a movie with the kids, going to the playground.
Evenings are much the same: once you’ve gotten home from work, sorted out dinner, cleaned up the kids and put them to bed there’s a couple of hours left. You can chill out on the sofa, waste time on the internet, catch up on your television viewing, or maybe even do something useful. However, you can’t do everything. You have to choose.
It seems a bit crass borrowing the spoons analogy, but if I picked another item of cutlery then I’d need to change the title of this blog post. For one thing, my situation is entirely by choice. For another, the only constraint here is time (although energy could certainly be in better supply!).
Maybe I will come up with a different utensil, but perhaps accepting that there are a limited number of tasks I can get done in an evening, or a weekend, will help motivate me to get the important things done and then appreciate those free moments all the more.
But what utensil should I use….?
