The Confabulator Cafe

Tag: Time

  • Time, and a Total Digression

    They say if you want to get something done, give it to a busy person. They have the rad time management skills to make it happen.

    I live alone. I have complete control of my time and attention. There is nobody shouting, “Mom! Mom! Mom! Mom!Mom!Momomomomomom!!!” in my ears. [0] I haven’t had cable TV for more than a year, so I should be writing all the time, right?

    Right…..

    My secret to getting anything done, in fact, relies on three tools. A well-crafted ToDo list, a deadline, and a kitchen timer. If I get all the errands on my ToDo list done by 1:00, I’ll have the afternoon to be lazy. Writing gets put on the ToDo list, just like laundry, dishes, taking out the recycling, returning books to the library, and so forth.

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  • Time and Teaching

    Once, when I was in teacher-training school, my class had to read an article about English teachers and writing. This article expressed the belief that such teachers should not pursue their own writing projects, because any time spent on self-centered expression was time taken away from lesson planning and grading, the true purposes of life for any educator. My classmates and I condemned this concept vociferously, both from a personal sanity perspective and from an educational perspective. For how does one teach a process that s/he does not experience? How can adults model a literary life they do not have?

    Alas, now that I am a teacher, I understand the article’s perspective, even as I disagree with it. Teaching is a time-consuming job. In the current environment we are asked to do more work with less funding and less time, and the powers that be would rather we think of every moment we are not teaching or preparing to teach as a moment stolen from the kids. Several educational consultants have even suggested that if we do ever go on vacation, we must record the vacation and turn it into a lesson for the kids. Of course the kids deserve the best education I can possibly offer them. But it’s easy to start thinking of myself purely as a work machine, here to revise lessons endlessly and integrate new technologies seamlessly and innovate constantly to improve. The constant admonishments from the media and neoliberal organizations about the dangers of bad teachers ring in my ears every time I sit down with a book, every time I pull out my keyboard, every time I journal rather than grade. (more…)

  • Time Theft

    I steal time. I never use it when I have it. Somehow, I write better when I’m working with borrowed time, when I’m up against a deadline, or I’m behind. I stay up way too late. I sneak time at work. I put off chores, show up late to gatherings, I ignore loved ones.

    If I have a whole day set aside to write, you bet your ass I will find a million other things to fill it with. However, if I have a million things to do and the itchings of an idea, I will put off the world to write it.

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