Time Spent Wishing

Most people take their social networking way too seriously. I’m not going to pretend to be an exception. I just spent the last fifteen minutes watching my cursor blink as I tried to think of the cleverest (this is a word) status about daylight savings time that I could. I thought up about four or five that I kind of liked but thought better of posting. They basically all complained in some manner or another about losing an hour of time. Ultimately I eschewed each of these in favor of one that better reflected reality. I realized that neither I nor anybody else who has the time to slow down and try to articulate their displeasure with losing sixty minutes actually has any use for them.

I used to let things like daylight savings time irritate me. It didn’t matter that I was going to waste it- it was my hour. I was one of those kids that thought of going to church every Sunday as a punishment because my Sunday morning was being taken away. As if an eight year-old boy has ever done anything meaningful in the history of humankind. At that point in my life I believed that I was entitled to be upset. People would tell me that it takes more muscles to frown than to smile and I would reply that I wanted to get a better workout. I was too caught up in what was said to think about what was meant.

I still think that referencing the ratio of muscles used in expressing disgust to those used in expressing delight is a pretty stupid argument for being pleasant. If your face is exhausted from pouting too much then you obviously have a serious problem, but as far as I know that’s something that only happens in my imagination. Even still, the existence of a bad argument doesn’t make its conclusion false. Several years ago I was presented with a much better expression.

There’s not enough time in the day to be angry.

If only I encountered those words at a younger age. How can you justify being upset at losing time after hearing this? No matter how much I complain about being down an hour I’ll never get it back. Worse yet, I now lose all the time that I spent complaining.

I know a lot of people that constantly need to remind everybody how much they have on their plate. The type that are constantly freaking out about the work they have to do and how they have no time to do anything fun. I wonder how much free time they’d have if they got a second of their life back for every time they’ve used the word “busy”.

This week was my spring break and I had a lot of things that I wanted to get done. It would be a gross exaggeration to say that I even accomplished half of my to-do list. I don’t exactly keep track, but I think it’s fair to say that I wasted at least 40 hours over the course of this week. It wouldn’t be fair for me to complain about losing one more.

Some would say that there is no reason that I should be blogging under these conditions. They might be right. It’s possible that I won’t catch up on all of my work. But I enjoy writing, so here I sit.

Another thing that I was told when I was young was that I was in charge of my own happiness. This didn’t register with me at all. There are a number of things that are out of my control that make me unhappy. I identified a logical contradiction, but I was once again making the mistake of hearing what was said and not was meant. What I was supposed to take from this expression is that I am in charge of how I manage the things that make me unhappy.

I would like to have a 24 hour long Sunday, but that’s not exactly something that I have power over. All there is for me to do is to make the best of the 23 that I do get.