A friend of mine let slip his thoughts on me having free time because I’m not doing volunteer stuff anymore (and to be fair, he does).
One thing that dancing with mortality does is increase the value of time and thus, how it gets spent. I could go into why we went in different directions, but it boils down to something pretty important:
How I spend my time.
It wasn’t that long ago where I was looking out for the welfare of others through looking out for a piece of property that I have a share of. 1/264th. It was thankless. People would always message me and gripe. And working with other volunteers on their schedules really was putting undue stress on me, particularly when they seemed like tourists because they hadn’t spent as much time as I thinking about issues, or working through them.
When I had the heart attack, it was likely expected that I would have resigned sooner. Instead, I held fast to give the newer volunteers as much time to learn what they needed to, which can be problematic given how much time people have to spend. People volunteer for different reasons, and people dedicate time based on those reasons and the amount of available time they have.
Meanwhile, my own time was ticking away waiting for people to catch up while waiting for paid contractors to do what they were supposed to. There’s only so much one person can hold together. There’s only so much one person can do, and it requires a level of cooperation with me that it seemed like it had become untenable because apparently my time and energy was not perceived of value enough for people to get it together.
Now I spend my time more thoughtfully, not chasing the whims of a her of cats as I got to get them across the river. Was it a failure on my part? Sure, the same way any part wears out. We are all parts of things that wear out.
But is my time less valuable? Not to me. I ration it out, reading and writing, interacting and – presently – making Jambalaya with turkey sausage. I sleep better.
When what you’re doing doesn’t take care of you, it’s time to move on. The time I spend thinking, writing, reading and thinking is of value. If I decide to do nothing for periods of time, that has value.
Given the opportunity, our vampiric society will bleed you dry, leaving you a dried husk of what was once value.
One thing in life everyone should know is that when the cost of the time is higher than the value of that time to yourself, it’s time to stop looking out the window and find the door.
It’s all subjective. You’re the subject.
