No time like the present

Ethan has been napping for 30 minutes.  I've had a cup of coffee, googled teething, then googled my dry cleaners, then played DrawSome on my iPhone with strangers.  Meanwhile, I have a psychology magazine open to an article about willpower resting on my lap.  Where is my willpower? Am I wasting time?  I have things I want to do.  Plant lettuce in the back yard.  Write a the next chapter in something that might one day be a book.  Read this article.  But then Jeremy Kyle is doing lie detector results right after this break, so....

The days fly by when they are divided into 3-4 hourly baby-segments of eating, playing and napping.  After the washing-up and a load of baby laundry, I can tell myself that an hour's TV watching is much deserved relaxation or that facebook is keeping in touch with friends, but we all know it's not.

As the days fly by, time marches ever forward.  Too quickly.  Some days I look at Ethan and almost don't recognise the emerging little person in front of me.  He changes so fast.  When he was small, Thom and I used to love a little squeeky sound he made, like a baby squirrel calling for its mother.  We would call back to him in little squeeks.  I loved that sound.  He's bigger now.  His vocal cords are bigger, too, and the squirrel sound is no more.  Replaced with coos and gurgles and grizzles that communicate so much more.  Wonderful, but also ever changing.  It's clear that if I blink for a moment, if I fail to appreciate each day, they will be gone before I have had a chance to enjoy them.

So , yes, I am wasting a lot of time.  And it pisses me off to admit it.  The thought of wasting time has annoyed me since Noah's death when I swore, in honour of his very short life, that I never would waste the life I'd been given.  At first, other people who didn't value the precious short moments we call life annoyed me.  But then I realised that I was just as guilty.  The daily drudgery bogs me down and I fall into comfortable procrastination.  I don't take opportunities to really appreciate other people in my life.  I watch Jeremy Kyle instead of planting my lettuces.  I guess I feel like there is always time, when the truth is that time is always shorter than we'd like it to be.

Why would I waste time?  I don't actually care which chav fathered the baby of poor woman on the Jeremy Kyle stage.  Watching does nothing more than provide an easy distraction.  Passes the time and fills my mind with something simple.  Jeremy Kyle is an easy example for all the things I'm certain we all do that fill our time without bringing us any closer to what we really truly want.  If I can get closer to what I really want, what's to stop me?  Maybe it's a little frightening to try for what is real, to love deeply, to live fully because the risks are so much greater.  The loss, the inevitable endings or failings cut to the bone.

So I'm finding it difficult to keep my promise and live up to this ideal.  Truth is that living the way I'd like is a big change, and such big shifts rarely happen spontaneously or quickly.  Today is another day.  The sun is shinning and while Ethan naps I can clip on the baby monitor and plant those lettuces.  Tomorrow I will see if I can keep my promise again, and for every tomorrow I am gifted, I can try again.