Doing the Math

I was in the shower this morning (the best ideas always come to you in the shower, don’t you know) and I starting doing some math to try and figure out where all my time goes. The shower is a terrible place to be if you’re trying to write things down, so I clung to the idea like a limpet to a rock until I was dried off and sitting at my lap top.

We start with 24 hours in a single day, multiplied by 7 days in a week, which is 168 hours. So…let’s break down the rest of it so it’s easier to see, shall we?

Sleep – lately I’ve been in bed by 11:30 and I’m up between 6 and 6:30, so that makes 6 ½ to 7 hours a night. Times 7 nights puts about 49 hours lost to sleep.

Morning Routine – feeding the cats, feeding the fish, exercise, shower and breakfast – this takes between 1 ½ and 2 hours every day, depending on how ambitious I am with the exercising and breakfast. We’ll say 2 hours, which makes it 14 hours a week.

Babysitting – most people have a job outside of the home, mine is babysitting on week days. The times vary, but on average I spend 24 hours a week at this.

Meals – this includes prep time as well as eating time. Breakfast was included in my morning routine, so we’re just talking lunch and supper. Lunches are usually easier, except on Wednesdays and Fridays when the grandbaby has lunch with us, so I’m going to average it out to an hour a day. Dinners…a little more time consuming, especially Sunday dinners when I like to serve a proper meal. During the week, however, I sometimes get away with something that just basically needs to be thrown into the toaster oven so I’m averaging it out to be between 1 ½ to 2 hours, which gives us a total of 21 hours a week.

That brings us to a grand total of 108 hours a week. When you subtract that from the original 168 hours, I’m still left with 60 hours unaccounted for. What else do I do?

Well, there’s grocery shopping on Fridays, that’s good for at least 2 hours. There are always errands to run – I’m going to allow about 10 hours for this. This past weekend I went thrift store shopping with a friend (4 hours), and the movies (2 hours), and I have my writing group on Thursdays (4 hours including travel time). I’m not really all that sociable, so I’m going to say 10 hours a week total for being sociable. Then there’s T.V. watching with the hubby – he says probably 20 hours a week. Altogether, that adds another 42 hours, bringing the grand total of accounted for hours to 150, leaving me with 18 hours unaccounted for.

Except they’re not really unaccounted for, I know exactly what I’ve been doing with them – online games, particularly the mindless ones. Lately it’s been playing solitaire on www.solitaireonline.com. I especially love the Tripeaks and Pyramid solitaire games, and there’s a Secret Double Klondike that is a little challenging.

Playing mindless games is my go-to activity for when I want to relax my mind. The problem is, I also have an addictive personality, so once my mind is relaxed I just keep going until my eyes are burning. I know I play a lot more than just 18 hours a week – I play when I’m watching T.V., or while I’m eating breakfast or dinner. This is why I stay away from the more complex, role playing games online. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to give them a try, but I’ve seen what they can do to normal people, I just don’t trust myself enough to be able to stop once I get hooked by them.

So this week’s goal is to try and break out of the solitaire addiction so I can get back to the writing. I have been writing (although not enough to include it in my time usage breakdown), I just need to be writing more.

I swear, this is going to be harder than cutting back on my snacking!