Stealing Time
I know that there's no such thing - no way to actually "steal" time. It doesn't belong to anyone, so it's ridiculous to even speak of it.
Regardless, I still elude myself into thinking that I can snatch time and hold onto it, somehow.
I wake up early, or stay up late, so I can write, read, or do something - anything - for myself.
This blog... This blog is something for myself. Something that I don't have to cater for anyone, something that doesn't affect my reputation (I hope)... Just a way to put myself back out into the world without it being social media. Still, I sometimes forget that purpose and get caught up in wording things just right - staring at a screen for 15 minutes and then finding an excuse to scroll reddit on my phone instead.
Today is not that day. I'm actually writing something. But I am stealing my bed-time to write this. I often sacrifice sleep to feel like I'm really taking time for myself. I know it's counterproductive - but it's hard to stop. It's something I do when I'm not satisfied with my daily life... and I'm not.
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These days, I feel a sense of urgency - maybe it's dissatisfaction with my present position in life that is driving me a bit harder to grow and change. In a nutshell, I'm not nearly as good at Japanese as I (or other people) thought, and I struggle on the daily to make sense of what my coworkers can understand in seconds. Meanwhile, I feel like that meme of a woman squinting at complex computations in the foreground. (You know the one, and if you don't, go look up "math lady.")
Replace the math with Japanese, and that's my life right now.
I often wish I could time travel back to 5 years ago when I had much more free time back in the US, and could have put a lot more effort into studying. I just didn't have any external pressure or immediate motivation to study at the time... so I coasted. I'm ashamed of that now, but to be fair, I spent my time productively in a lot of other important ways - taking care of family matters, upkeep of my grandfather's house, supporting a non-profit nearly full-time, and sometimes career coaching on the side.
But regardless of what else I had going on, the fact is that now, here, I have to put in concerted effort to improve. So I study every day, before and after work if I can manage it, and try also to take turns cooking and cleaning (Eric does his fair share too), and maybe exercise or take care of my body, spend time with friends, work on the weekdays and sometimes weekends too...
Isn't that how it goes? Hindsight is 20/20, and I can complain and blame my past self for decisions that affect me today - but how on earth would I have known that I'd be in exactly this place, 5 years ago? How can I possibly guess where I'll be in 5 years from now, and anticipate whatever skills gaps I think I'll have failed to fill by then, and then somehow, paradoxically get around it? Or otherwise suffer the blame that future-me would convey by bending time-space to tell me? (What a sci-fi ride that turned into, thanks for playing along here...)
Eric has often reminded me that it's insulting to myself that I am so harsh on "past Jenny" for what doing what she thought was right at the time. I suppose that's true. I can be pretty mean to myself.
And the other "human" part of what I'm doing now, is that to somehow make up for the guilt and regret of past decisions and present consequences, I "steal time" in a way that will hurt me more in the long run.
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What I want most for anyone reading this to take away is this - If you too find yourself "stealing time" for your own pleasure and sanity, I think we both need to reconsider how we structure our day, and bring to mind the "time is money" analogy for a new purpose. If time is money, then no good will come of stealing it from other things, like sleep. I can only steal time from myself... But I can also save it, or set it aside.
In modern financial advice, you may see the phrase "Pay yourself first." Meaning, as soon as you get a paycheck, you should take out the amount you wish to save and put into a separate account (instead of paying bills and shopping for groceries and then hoping that you have the amount you wanted left-over). Your own future is worth more than any bills you have to pay, or gadgets you found online.
Applying this analogy to my life - I need time for myself - I need to save that time or put it intentionally into my day, preferably at the beginning. Then, I need to pay my bills by doing things that matter for my health and future, like sleeping, eating properly, working, and studying. And finally, I have to be careful of wasting my allotted time on things that don't matter to me at all, like doom-scrolling or watching too much TV.
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It's still an absurd concept, trying to manipulate or hold time... But I think I feel a little better about it now.
I'd better go to sleep.