I’m ready to start. Had a good sleep. Drunk some coffee. Head bouncing with ideas and possibilities: “I could…”

Get out my “today” book. New page. Heading:

“What I’d like to do today” (recognising that after I’ve slept well I’m likely to attempt the impossible- all the things I’ve been wanting to do but have been too tired or too busy or …)

1. See my Uncle in the Nursing Home and my Book Club friend who lives alone and is unwell.
2. write and publish a post.
3. go to the gym, swim and use the steam room
4. sort out my study
5. write thank you cards
6. fold and put away the washing
7. organise my diary, plan and book the trip to Canberra
8. wander around my local shopping centre and window shop
9. visit Greenpatch nursery and buy some vegie plants
10. garden- weed under the deck and pot up some plants
11. make some phone calls
12. …

That’s only the beginning and it’s already midday.

Years ago I experienced one of those rare moments of insight that lead to  self understanding:  I was- completely, hopelessly, totally- unrealistic about time.  It came about like this:

My current man (boyfriend? lover? partner? my significant other? never quite know what to call them) was organising a conference and ferrying delegates from the airport. I was to pick up one international arrival. I suggested to him that we have dinner en route. Well! He looked at me as if were crazy- “Dinner!” he said. “Where’s the time to have dinner?”

It was one of those optical illusion moments for me. You know the ones, where the vases turn into a profile or… I have personal moments like that, when a set of facts transform into something else. I looked at my watch- thirty minutes to the airport, fifty to the accommodation, home for me, back to the airport for him… an impossibility, absolutely no spare time. Whatever was I thinking of?

A light went on. This was why I could sometimes be late, didn’t get things done and kept running out of time… it was because I was so completely, totally unrealistic about time. (And about money, maybe the two go together.) I believe there is an unlimited amount, or at the least, much, much more than there is in actuality. And so I run into trouble.

Since that moment, if I’m functioning well, before I need to be somewhere I will sit down and work backwards:

if I need to be there by two o’clock then-

it will take me forty minutes of travel, thirty minutes to shower and dress, fifteen minutes to organise the things I need to take, that adds up to eighty five minutes. I must start getting ready, then, by half past twelve.

Sound over organised? Frankly unbelievable? You can do all that without even thinking?

It’s the only way I can be sure of being on time and even then my head will sometimes do its optical illusion trick and I’ll switch the appointment time with when I need to leave. Oh dear!

You will appreciate that I remain ever grateful to that particular man for his shocked reaction to my simple “we could have dinner.” If he’d said calmly that he didn’t think so, I may never have reached this level of self awareness and I could be back in that land of rushing, being late, wondering why I never get things done….instead of being calm, organised, accomplished, poised…(if only!

Today? Well, I realised the list- just a beginning mind, was possibly a little long…

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