Today’s question is – if I had an extra hour in the day, I would:

• Work on my photography skills
• Read
• Clean the house more frequently (it gets way too dirty for my tastes before we clean it again)

I would not:

• Cook more – cooking once or twice a month works just fine for me.  Eating a fresh cooked meal each day is not important anymore.

I found today’s question from 30 Days of Lists causing me to think more carefully about the constant wish for more time in my day, mostly – is an extra hour a day enough time to make a difference?

Not surprisingly, the answer is yes and no.

Yes – I’ve gotten a surprisingly number of big projects done by devoting 30 minute a day most days of the week to it.  I get frustrated feeling that I’m barely chipping away, but then one day it’s done or done enough to move on.

No – It takes me forever to get anything meaningful done.  I’d be more satisfied if I could devote big chunks of time to my passions and interests outside of work.  And by big chunks of time, I mean high quality time, not the leftover time when I’m too tired to really enjoy what I’m doing.

I also wonder if I could find an extra hour in the day, right now.  For example, being more disciplined after work to work on my photography skills or sit and read instead of mindlessly watching television.  If I am somewhat successful to find 30 minutes a day to work on a crummy project, can I expand that to 60 minutes and do something more worthwhile?  Or spend it half on the crummy project and half on my photography?

That’s easy to write, but I’m not so sure about execution between coming home late from work most nights and being so tired by 9 pm – which is normal to be tired that late in the evening.  It’s hard to complain about being tired after a good and productive day at work.

But it’s worth thinking about and seeing if I can tinker with my routines more (here’s a post from several years ago on why I think routines are so important in my life).

Changing topics – I haven’t responded yet to the comments from yesterday (thank you so much for taking time to write me something!), but after I wrote yesterday’s post, I wondered why I cared so much about sharing my list.  Is this interesting enough to bother with posting each day or should I just keep it in my journal?

Several years ago, I wrote a good post about why I blog.  I’d been working my way back from some major discouragement over the whole blogging thing and laid out why I was blogging and keeping on with it.

Those reasons are still true two years later.  I blog:

• To remember my life for myself;
• To share my life with family and friends, including the many friends I’ve made here through our blogs;
• To be an encouragement to others;
• Because I need to write;
• To point out beauty and happiness everywhere.

Yesterday’s post did all those things.  Some of you hooted with laughter because you would have had the same items on your list.  Ya’ll thought it was pretty good that you weren’t the only ones that couldn’t pass by those things!  For me, much of that list is the same as it was when I was a child and young adult.  The things I loved then, I still love now.  And as always, you enjoyed my pictures, even though they were slices of life instead of pretty flowers.

I’m enjoying the challenge and the questions.  I’m also making some new friends at WordPress who are also participating in this.

So yes, it’s worth my time to write this up and share it.  I hope you do too and thanks, as always, for the likes, your words of encouragement and the laughter you share in the comments.

#30Lists

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