I'm out of excuses -- how about you?

It would be valid to say that I’m too busy to learn kite-surfing. It would also be a lie. (Image by Steven Bol)

Once upon a time, it was so easy to say that I had no time. It might have even been true.

I would wake up before dawn to get out on the road before the traffic picked up, only to find that thousands of others had done the same and I’d be stuck in traffic anyway. Work was a constant flow of meetings and conversation and collaborative activity, punctuated by precious moments of alone time in which I tried to chip away at the ever-growing to-do list. I fought my way home through the traffic, but more often than not, the day still wasn’t over: there was bound to be a social event or professional obligation of some kind that would take me up to, and sometimes past, bedtime.

I liked this fast pace of life. I enjoyed seeing so many people and working at so many different types of tasks. Days felt full — meaningful, joyful, eventful.

And then, one day, it stopped. No more commute. No more casual conversation and connection. No more social life. Days were barren.

For the first two-and-a-half months of the pandemic, I was still busy. I was in crisis mode, for much of that time, actually. And there have been busy periods since then, like when a key member of my team got Covid, or when I had make a cross-country move. But each time those tides receded, I was left upon a quiet shore, with lonely sands stretching out in all directions. I was not busy. Some days, I even had nothing to do.

Have I found stuff to do? Oh yeah. In fact, I realized that I had buried a whole lot of tasks and projects in the days when I didn’t have time to get to them. I was so used to deferring and denying them that it took months to see that I was still doing this even though I didn’t have a good reason to. Eventually, however, I had to acknowledge that I was out of excuses. I did have the time. I could do the work.

And that is how I have been spending the quiet gray winter Saturdays of the pandemic: chipping away at the projects that I can no longer pretend I don’t have time for. I wrote the first draft of the piano book I’d been threatening to write since 2011. I got caught up on eight months’ worth of bookkeeping. I’m chipping away at the pile of papers that needs to be filed, shredded, or thrown out. I’m writing back to friends who have emailed me.

It turns out that, however true it may once have been, my assertion that I don’t have time is now just a vestigial habit. What’s more, I see now that even during the periods of time when I thought I didn’t have time, I did — I just focused on other things and set my life up in such a way that my choices were limited to those things. I was always in control of my own decisions, and I made the ones I was used to making.

It took a complete disruption of my routine to discover that it was not so much limited time but limited imagination that kept me away from certain tasks and projects. And now that I am confronted with this, I can never go back to the way it was before. If I choose to evade certain work, I am accountable for that.

The freedom we enjoy is a miracle. I am learning to own it to a degree I never have before. I get to do whatever I want — and I have the responsibility to recognize the truth of that. So even on some future day when I’m joyfully busy once again, out in the world interacting with other humans, I need to remember that I can make time for the things that are important to me. Indeed, that’s what I’ve implicitly done, whether I’m consciously aware of it or not. So I can deliberately evaluate whether my choices match my values, and adjust accordingly when they are in conflict. I’d rather be conscious of my own choices, wouldn’t you?

Is there something you’re putting off because you don’t have time? Do you think you’ll ever have more time than you have right now? What would change if you made that project a priority?