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abundance
January 2009 
What do you have the hardest time giving?
Posted on Jan 5th, 2009
by 
timefly
timefly
This is in Response to the Questions and Reflections for January 05, 2009:
What a great, timely question for the new year, and for me, it's an easy one...
I have the greatest difficulty giving time. When I'm working, I feel like I can't give 100% of myself to the work because it takes time from other things that I actually enjoy, so I hoard my time a little. (Which means work takes longer, and I have less time for the other things.)
When I'm in my non-work time, I have a hard time completely focusing on my daughter or wife because, as much as I love them and enjoy their company, my work has "robbed" me of my me-time, so I feel like I'm shorting myself of private time and feel distracted. (Which means that the time I give to others isn't always the highest quality.)
When I actually get private time, I feel guilty about using it and feel like I should be either working or spending the time with my family, so i don't get much out of the me-time I carve out, and that leaves me wanting more of it until I start working again at the same time that it takes me away from my family time. The circle is complete.
It's something I'm paying attention to and trying to work on; I've spread my perception of scarcity throughout my different blocks of time, and I find that rather than trying to rid myself of that perception of scarcity, I try to reallocate it, so maybe I only feel scarcity while I'm working so I can feel less scarcity when I'm with my daughter. I know - academically - that it's not exactly true that time is scarce, but it's very easy to feel differently "in the moment."
Part of me knows that it's all perceptual games, otherwise there couldn't be different flavors of busy, like good-busy, where time just falls away , and bad-busy, where time just crawls. Or maybe those qualities of business verify that time really is scarce - if I weren't always busy, why would I need to qualitatively judge the different types of busy-ness I'm immersed in.
Don't know yet, but I'm keeping my eyes on it. When I can be mindful and bypass some of the games and just be in the moment rather than focusing on where or when I'd rather be living, it all works out just fine. So while I'm looking for other answers, part of my work is to just get out of my thoughts and into my life whenever I can remember to; maybe that's the whole point, anyway.
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