Wasting Time

It may seem a bit counterintuitive to write a post about wasting time on the day after a holiday when most of us likely spent much of our day doing exactly that. Does it strike you as a bit odd that we celebrate work by not working? In any event, for most of us, on the last official holiday of the summer season, yesterday was a day for doing not very much.

The holiday is past, and now it's time to be turning our thoughts toward fall. In some parts of the country, this is back to school week, although here in the South, we've been at that for almost a month now. No matter. Labor Day signals a shift toward fall.  Away from the slower pace of summer and back toward regular routines.  In theory at least, that would mean less time-wasting and more productive activity, which causes my mind to turn toward all the ways I waste time.

I'm certain I'm not the only one. We all manage to do some time wasting in one form or another. Watching too much television. Playing too many games. For me, that would mean too much time playing Words With Friends, a game I enjoy very much. It challenges me, and I've reached the age where mental stimulation is a good thing. Need to keep those brain cells working! Even when I'm in the midst of a terrible losing slump as I have been lately. Even when the game makes me feel really stupid. Even then it's still a good challenge. But I've been spending way too much time playing and not enough time doing other things I need to be doing, so I need to do a better job of limiting my time in the game.

I waste a lot of time redoing things. Old habits are hard to break, and often new habits are hard to learn. Consider, for example, the matter of double spacing - or not - after a period. I learned to type on an old Royal typewriter. Not even an electric typewriter. A manual typewriter.  (I'm really dating myself now.) I took a typing class one summer when I was in high school, and that's what we used. Later, as a young adult working in a law firm, I used a Selectric. (Still dating myself.) I had really good typing speed, even on the old Royal, and I dutifully learned to double space after periods and colons. But in this computer age, the double space rule no longer applies. Publishers don't want to see double spaces. This old gal is having a really hard time resisting the double-tap on the space bar at the end of each sentence, so I'm wasting a lot of time going back and correcting what I have typed.

Your time-wasting habits may be different than mine. Maybe you spend too much time in front of the television. Maybe you're spending too much time doing things you want to do instead of the things you need to do, or the things you are responsible to do. I'm fairly confident that each of us is doing [more than] our share of time wasting. And how sad that is!

We are given a limited number of hours in each day. A limited life-span on this earth. These times are gifts from a gracious God. How said that we so carelessly value the time we are given.  That is not to say that we shouldn't have time for relaxing; we should. But we must be careful not to let the relaxation time overshadow the other important things we should be doing. Sometimes relaxation is the most important thing. But not always!

I don't want to be a time-waster. I want to value and use wisely the time I have been given. That's what's on my mind this morning as we turn the corner from summer into fall.

"Teach us realize the brevity of life, so that we may grow in wisdom." (Psalm 90:12 NLT)