Governed by time

I went on a course recently which said there was no such as thing as time management - time in and of itself is an abstract concept and one which can not be slowed or speeded up, thus there is no way of managing it. What we can manage is how we control our approach to time or, in some cases, allow time to control us.

I'm a bit of a time freak - I get nervous without a watch, and being late makes me break out in a sweat. The other useful thing which this course taught me was that some people are not like this. I know, it's true, don't be shocked. To some people time is much more fluid and relaxed, and the concept of being late is simply not one which crosses their radar. In some ways I would like to be like that, but in other ways I wouldn't, since I know that when other people are late for things which I have arranged then it just drives me crazy. It makes me feel like I'm late, and there's not a damn thing I can do about it. The control freak in me gets very nervous when things like this happen.

What I have found myself doing increasingly lately is trying to squeeze things into unfeasibly short periods of time. Thus, when I was going into the office regularly, I would leave knowing that I had about three or four minutes leeway or I'd miss my Met line train - and since I needed to use the Piccadilly line and the Bakerloo line before reaching the Met line this was foolhardy behaviour to say the least. I never missed the train though, although I did have to leap on once as the doors were closing. Luckily the belly wasn't as big then, or I might have had the belly inside the carriage and the rest of me dancing alongside.

But why am I pressuring myself in this way? Do I not have enough pressure? You'd have thought that growing one child while keeping the other child and Husbandio alive and in a clean house with clean clothes while working a four day week would be enough, but seemingly not. No, I must also sign Child #1 up for classes (ballet, tap, disco, swimming) and schedule evening interviews for work with people on the West Coast who can't do any other time. Or book myself into ante-natal classes which wipe out one whole weekend day, and then arrange an evening out on the same day. Or get a kitchen put in just a few weeks before my due date.

I shall attempt to use my maternity leave to get my sense of time put back into perspective, but before you know it I'll be chucking Child #1 into school and Child #2 into nursery while checking my e-mail and driving the car. Those all sound like tasks which can be accomplished at the same time. I think I'm going to blame the internet for all this actually - you can get access to everything so fast that it shapes our assumptions about the rest of our lives. I am now off to practice my deep breathing and concentrate on slowing down, but before that I must just .......... (kidding - over and out from me, for tonight anyway).