How much time can you give?

Now I get the real meaning of the phrase ‘enjoy your youth’. What is interesting is that when one is still young, no matter how much advice is given, we never take it seriously, until such a time when responsibilities bug us down and consume our existence.

As you get older, you see the necessity of investing your time in productive activities. At the same time, peoples’ desire to get your attention increases. The only constant here is the length of a day…24hours. As you get older, you meet new people, make more friends, build stronger bonds professionally and socially… all these requiring a piece of your time. You take up more responsibilities at work, maybe having parallel jobs like running a business alongside your regular 7.30am to 5pm, or sitting in one committee or another, church responsibilities, etc… and it’s still 24hours a day. And then here comes marriage [in-laws] and/or children to add to the [over-indulgent] relatives that you already have!

What compounds the situation is that all these different time-demanding entities require your full attention and expect you to be efficient when interacting with them. How possible can that be? Now here’s what I think (it’s my thoughts, my secret thoughts, and I take full responsibility for it: FOCUS ON THE ESSENTIALS! Let me break this down in the next few paragraphs.

Essential 1: My job. Ok, shoot me because I didn’t start with family but remember I didn’t say I was listing in order of importance. I am starting with professional life because it has a structured timetable already, it will help me to work out the others around it. My job is very important to me. Before I used to think that when I start having children, I will give myself a professional break and have them all at once, take care of them and then go back to work. Let’s be real here fellows, when you have all these degrees burning in your back pack, a job with prospective, people who look up to you for financial support, increasing job scarcity and fears of job insecurity, you just can’t afford to say ‘aaahhh!’ to your job. Some people quit their jobs to take care of their kids and end up taking it out on the poor little pumpkins because of frustration. Even as a mom who so badly loves her son, I don’t think I will be happier if I quit my job and stayed home with him. But I am just one in millions of women on earth. The contrary will work perfectly for some, maybe most, women… don’t take my word for gospel, it is just my thoughts! So with my job safe, I block out 6.30am (or whenever I leave the house in the morning) to 6pm (or whenever I get back home).

Essential 2: With the food on the table, I now move on to immediate family (micro family as I love to call it). In case of emergency (celebration of events, ailment, doctor’s appointments…) at this level, Essential 1 will step aside for Essential 2. That tells you how very important immediate family is. If I have to, I will wake up at 4am to do laundry, prepare the baby’s (or children’s) food, prepare them for school, before getting ready for work. In the evening, I will prepare dinner, prepare spices for the next day meals, iron dresses, make sure assignments are done, school bags packed, etc. I will sleep for a couple of hours if that is what it takes to make my immediate family happy. On weekends, spend as much time as possible with them, go shopping with them, go to the park, … just making sure that whatever activity I am carrying out involves them. That way I can do the things I need to do and still have my family’s attention.

Essential 3: Religious, social and moral responsibilities. Whatever activities you are involved in that give you a sense of fulfillment, could be leisure, clubs, etc, then give them some attention after prioritizing family and job.

Essential 4: Extended immediate family (siblings & their kids, parents). Call me what you may but I have realized I need to discriminate between my immediate extended family, and the larger extended family that includes cousins, uncles and aunts. I will give up some of my family time for this group of people depending on the necessity. I will give them a few days of my annual leave. I will call them from time to time to find out how they are doing.

Essential 5: I love my friends and they represent different things to me, every one of them special. I use friends here in the real sense of the word, not just loosely. My friends have almost same privileges as immediate extended family but for the fact that we will have more cumulative face time over the year. Not that I will spend days at a time with a friend, but we can meet over lunch, a couple of hours every month… and then by the end of the year we might have spent more face time than I would with most of my immediate extended family.

Essential 6: Extended family (aunts, uncles, cousins) and other friends (acquaintances). I know some cousins are as good as sisters/brothers, but in trying to prioritize my time, I draw the line. Most of these people I never get to see, or we meet occasional (events, celebrations, etc). These only get the piece of my time that comes by chance (like a chance meeting), or when there is such an emergency that I cannot ignore.

If you notice I haven’t said anything about in-laws. That is a very slippery terrain that I will like to explore in details in another post.
Those are my secret thoughts, what are yours?