What, then, is time? If no one asks me, I know. If I wish to explain it to one that asketh, I know not. My soul is on fire to know this most intricate enigma. St. Augustine of Hippo
After more than a full year of Big Projects layered onto Big Project, I woke the last two mornings with my head empty,
“I thought your head was always empty,” younger son said via phone which made it safe to say.
Addle-headed is not the same as empty-headed.
I had no trip to organize (we’d had three over the past year), no pressing detail work, no painting or fixing, no editing or marketing. No renovations. All of which required Big Projects over the past year, usually more than one at a time.
The last two Big Projects are in: final galley edits on the poetry book went in Friday with all the dots, tiddles, M-dashes, misspelled words and commas marked and corrected. On Monday, taxes followed the trail to the post office, complete with K Schedule and A Schedule and forms with various numbers – several beginning with 88-somethings, and a second packet with the Missouri taxes and its several pages.
Both projects filled themselves with a multitude of numbers and fine details and checking and rechecking which filled my head the first thing upon waking. Big Projects, of whatever kind, do that.
What’s a girl to do with no Big Projects? With time on her hands and an empty head?
I’ve never been a big television watcher. A farm childhood and years of international living and travel took care of that piece of American culture. I missed most of the 80s decade all together. Actually, I missed a lot of the 70s too. What I remember from the 1980s is living in New Orleans, New York, St. Lucia, Mexico, and Washington D.C. – where I owned a television for the first time in years. The same television now lives in our bedroom.
It’s too cold and rainy to walk although my body could certainly use a long walk. A recent bout with amnesia and high blood pressure (fancy that!) precludes work with weights above my head. Yoga requires too many head down poses to spend much time with that.
So I stare out the window at a muddy yard, remember last summer’s drought. The oak has stubbornly refused to leaf out. It obviously knew something the rest of us only guessed at. Its time is not the calendar’s time. Its time is its own.
As is mine.
Time, that most elusive and unknowable task-master, stretching.
.
janetsunderland.com 
you had time and you didn’t sleep in????? what were you thinking????
Good point. Unfortunately, I’m one of those who, when awake, can’t get back to sleep. And I usually wake early although I don’t want to get out of the house early. It’s the farmer in me, I suppose although I’ve usually been an early riser-not leave the house sort of person.
How I yearn for a time between big projects. If there were such a time, I suspect I would seize another big project to fill that time. But right now, I’m only working on absolving myself of completing some big projects that I now consider not the best use of my time.
Right now, the only big projects I want to seize is getting back to writing! I did buy a glass top WalMart desk for the empty office and Stephen put it together with me helping. So now I can putz in an empty office and see what happens. I’ll probably fill it up with all the books I have stacked elsewhere randomly!
Funny thing about your ruminations on time. Last Sunday, in your homily, you alluded to the wonder of we humans choosing to wear watches; a symbol of something so intangible as time. And as my mind wandered down that rabbit trail for a moment I was astonished to recall that I stopped wearing a watch when I stopped working for someone else. Over 20 years ago I became self-employed and took back control over my own time. ahhhh, and it is such a wonderful, if fleeting, feeling.
“fleeting…” yep. That’s seems to be what it does. Fleet… or Fly… flee… there. Funny word, fleeting. Thanks Valorie!
As always, I so enjoyed your post. You write so eloquently what most of us only think. Time, yes, I find a lot of that on my hands. Nothing to do, nowhere to go. What is one to do with all this TIME???
Thanks so much for being such a loyal reader, Rebecca. Time is only a construct, but my goodness, such a complicated one! “Time on my hands.” Now there’s an interesting saying. What does it look like on one’s hands? Sort of like tattoos? Funny when you think about it.