Every
age, every new development brings ways to spend ones time – and not necessarily
in a productive or intelligent way.
As a
child my nose was always in a book except for the rare occasions where my
mother caught me and made me 1) do some chore or 2) go outside and play. I wasn’t
much better at school always hurrying to finish the assigned task so that I
could take my book out of my desk and hiding it on my lap (or at least I
thought that I was hiding: it was a rude awakening when I did my student
teaching to realize that all those years, all those teachers, everyone could
easily see the entire class – even the back row – and what the students were
doing).
Although
I kept my nose in books – and still do – other ages brought other ways of “wasting”
time: the mini solitary deck of cards with which I whiled away the odd 10
minutes; the bundle of knitting that was my constant companion for many years; the
500 – 1000 piece puzzles that took days of not weeks to complete; the piles of
magazines without which I feel insecure – all of these served to spend time,
sometimes way too much time, although I am not sure that cleaning the house
etc. would have been a more productive use of that time. Then there were the
first handheld games: Game Boy and Tetris (swiped from my older son when he was
at school: good thing that neither of my sons really read my blog!). And
although I never got into video games, I will be the first to acknowledge that
my use of computer games is not any better.
I can’t even claim that by playing Letter Garden I am improving my mind
(most of the words I “make” are of the three or four letter variety –
occasionally I’ll find a “write”, “exit” or “hazard”, but it’s rare.) Are the bursting bubbles type improving my
hand/eye coordination? Probably not even. Sigh.
So this
morning in a fit of “I have to be productive today” I didn’t turn on the
computer until 10:30. It’s amazing the amount of things I got accomplished:
swept the laundry room, including picking up after the cats; cleaned the tops
of all the cupboards therein and put away or otherwise disposed of many items;
vacuumed my office and dusted the tops of everything and – drumroll – the best
of all sorted through my guarantees file and threw away (as in actually tossed)
52 items!
I am
patting myself on the back, but it will all be downhill from here on in as I
have turned the computer back on and even if I do get some tasks done that
involve having to have the computer on, I can guarantee that at least an hour
(or two) of the day will be spent playing computer games, I mean, really how industrious
can one be on a Monday?
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| Guarantees to be thrown out |
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| reward for work done |
