All the time in the world

My place needs a lot of work.  I love my condo, but it desperately needs to be organized, and repaired, and renovated.  For that reason, I am currently on a mission to thoroughly clean and purge my entire apartment, room by room.

This project started last October, and I’ve made significant progress.  Among several accomplishments to date, I am especially proud of having banished the pigeons from the balcony; I have also managed to sort through a cache of storage bins that had been conspicuously squatting in my son’s bedroom while he was away at university.  The next big job will be to slog my way through a mammoth stockpile of boxes.  Each of these boxes is packed with forgotten and mostly useless miscellanea, and they’re crammed in and stacked to the ceiling of my so-called “walk-in” closet.

So far, the most arduous challenge has not been the work itself.  The work is enjoyable and satisfying, provided I can dedicate my Sundays to it.  But it is difficult to free up an entire Sunday, even once or twice a month.  Complicating matters further, each job takes at least three times as long as I plan for.  Sometimes I wish I could just take a few weeks off and get it all done in one go.

Oh, if only I had more time.

 

Then, about six weeks ago, immediately following the declaration of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, everyone was more or less ordered to stay at home.  Businesses started to shut down.  People began to hunker down.  It was kind of intense, and bewildering.

And all of a sudden, I had all the time in the world.

At some point it must have occurred to me that I had unexpectedly gotten exactly what I’d wished for: ample time to finally complete my home-organization project.  But this idea has not become reality, and has remained little more than a noble intention.

Because, to the mild dismay of my family, and quite possibly to the displeasure of the gods of order and propriety, I have not invested my generous windfall of free time into cleaning and purging.  I haven’t exactly squandered it, either.  I have indeed spent it wisely, and profited enormously, just not in ways that I might have expected.  Here’s what I’ve been doing.

First, I spent a colossal number of hours completing a video montage as a gift for my parents’ 50th anniversary.  I increased my running routine to a 60-minute run, three times a week, and I’ve started lifting weights.  I have given myself a full-night’s sleep nearly every night, for weeks now.  I have read three novels, two short-story collections, and I’m currently reading Midnight’s Children, by Salman Rushdie.  I have baked loaves of banana bread, multiple batches of cookies, and cooked a spectacular dinner on Easter Sunday.  I have spent time just being with my children, more than I have in years.  And of course, I have finally started to fulfill my ambition to write.  As for my day job, I have done that mostly from home, and mostly on my schedule. 

So, almost by accident, and with very little conscious deliberation, I have found myself investing in what I love to do.  On the one hand I have neglected to clean and purge my apartment; on the other I have immersed myself in many of the things that give me joy and make me happy to be alive.

 

I have contemplated the irony that limitations are often necessary to foster motivation and productivity.  When time is precious and I’m able to free up a Sunday, for example, I ensure that it is put to good use, and I make great strides organizing my home.  But now that I have free time in abundance, my motivation to purge, clean, sort, and organize seems to have evaporated.

As true as that may be, these exceptional times have offered many of us a rare privilege.  Since the limitations on our time have been minimized or removed entirely, we should take hold of this moment and welcome the chance to become reacquainted with our deepest yearnings; to discover what we are still capable of; to clean up our priorities; to purge our minds of unimaginative thinking; to re-organize our selves.

For me, in the back of my mind, I know that there will always be time to complete my cleaning project.  Those boxes aren’t going anywhere.  I’ll get to them, soon enough.