"How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” That is a quote by Annie Dillard. Dillard is an American author who won a Pulitzer prize in 1975 for general nonfiction. I like her quote because it is short, to the point, and on target.
How we spend our days is ultimately how we spend our lives. The quote makes me stop and think about how I am spending my day. Too much of my day is spent working for others. Not enough is spent on what is truly important... teaching my daughters, exploring the world and generally keeping the people I care about happy. Although everyone has to work to survive, I am painfully aware of the time I spend working for others, likely because I once spent over a decade working for myself. When you work for yourself, the hours you spend are actually bringing you all of the benefits of that work. When you are working for someone else, they are deriving all of the extra benefit from your work above and beyond whatever they are giving you to do the work in the first place. So how do you want to spend your life? And how close are you to living your life in the way you want? After reading the above quote, I asked myself that question. I want to spend my life enjoying my daughters' company, hiking the Appalachian trail, practicing karate and learning. Short bouts of reading, sleeping, and watching the occasional movie would also be nice. So how am I doing? I spend a lot of my day working for someone else, and an hour or two teaching my daughters. Ashleigh gets traditional school work from me, while Maddie now gets most of her schooling through VLACs and instead gets (what I hope are) deep conversations from me to help her learn to cope with life. Twice a week, I get to work out and practice karate. In between, I try to get little jobs done around the house and generally do everything else that normally needs to be done during a lifetime. Sometimes I combine these functions. When I hit the men's room, I'll pick up a book and read a chapter or two before I come out. Otherwise, I find I do not schedule enough time to read. RIght before bed, I will also pick up a book and read for a few pages. My bathroom book is different than my bedroom book, thus I can often read one to two books a week. Another way I combine activities is that when I come in from outside, I make sure to hit my punching bag a little bit. It is rare that I can schedule a full thirty minutes on the bag anymore. I am just too busy. Thus, by making sure to punch it or kick it a couple of times as I walk past, I am sure to get at least a little practice in each day. In the end, the one constant in my life is that I always try to make time for my daughters. Children are the most important things that anyone can do in their life in my opinion. Why have them if you won't schedule time to enjoy their company. The bar can wait. Your old friends can wait. Hell, the job can wait! Enjoy your children while you can! Because pretty soon, they will be enjoying their own children. (picture by Maddie)
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