Time: It's NOT on My Side

Hello everyone. After over a week hiatus, I am back to the blog. Believe me, it was not for lack of things to share with all of you. I never seem to be lacking for that. Instead, and as is it is most of the time, it was for lack of time. Over the past few months I have learned and/or concretized the following lessons:

• There will never be enough time.
  
• Things will not spontaneously slow down.
• The phrase to "make time" is very accurate.

Let me explain. . . I had a very busy summer. Summer tends to be my busiest time of year with work because that is when the libraries are in full swing with their summer reading programs. Last summer I did 55 shows in the span of two months. I remember thinking during this extremely busy time, "Once the summer is over, things will slow down. Then I'll have more time." Right? Wrong!! Once the busy summer of shows was over, it seems that my calendar filled up with a million other things. These things kept me busy and pretty much without a break straight through to Christmas. Around Christmas, I finally slowed down a bit. But I don't think it was because I ran out of things to do. It was because I decided that I had to make the time to stop.

Now after my short reprieve, January is in full swing, and as I look at my calendar, I can see that things are not going to slow down for a long time -- in fact, I've already got lots of different deadlines to meet all the way through August of 2011. And I know that soon that will stretch itself into September, then October, then -- well, you get the idea.

I used to believe that I had busy seasons and not so busy seasons with work, but now it occurs to me that in our modern world, all of life is a busy season. We have to be very intentional about stopping. We can't wait for things to slow down because in most cases, they won't. We have to carve out time for rest, for putting family and friends first, for stopping to smell the roses, etc. We have to make time for what's important or else time (or our lack thereof) will make us into busy, self-centered, preoccupied people that we would never want to be.