Tetris

For every cliché about time, for every corny lyric, and every lame movie plot, there is a kernel of truth (did anybody say “cliché”?).  (Also, punctuation is awesome!)  Time is unique in that it is both abstract and concrete – both a human construct and a natural phenomenon.  It is ephemeral, yet it can be felt.  It is steady yet seems to be in constant flux.  It can be added and subtracted and counted, yet it has no physical presence.  It flies, drags, stops, gets lost, heals, and can be killed.  And that is just the short list.

I view time much like a game of Tetris – at the level where mistakes are unavoidable, but, with a little luck and some quick thinking can often be corrected.  I stack my days full of events and obligations and opportunities with little or no buffer or cushion.  Every moment of every day is spoken for – squares and ‘L’s and zigzags and ‘T’s all neatly nestled together waiting for that perfect long rectangle to come along and make it all flow.  Except as often as not, the slot for the rectangle gets jammed with an errant zigzag or a ‘L’ that didn’t get flipped over fast enough, and then the whole mass of neatly packed shapes becomes inaccessible.  Thus goes my schedule.

It is an interesting way to live – this thing where there is no “free” time.  I’ve been at it for a while now – at varying levels of intensity – and I’ve become addicted.  Even when I have days that could be loose and open, I pack them to the gills.  I plan my errands for peak efficiency.  I think about going to the coffee shop and reading a magazine by the window and sipping tea from an oversized mug, and then I go grocery shopping and do my laundry and wash my car instead.  I see people who lounge, and I wonder how they hell they manage.  Who gets their food?  Who works their job?  Who cleans their house?  Who does their homework?  Who goes to their classes?  Or, do they just let some of those things go?

I spend a lot of time trying to catch up with myself.

All this technology we have, all these modern conveniences were supposed to make life easier.  They’ve done the opposite.  They’ve made it possible for us to do too much.  Gone is the default down time – the time cushions that used to accompany every day tasks.  Instead, every moment is go time.  Always on.  Pedal to the metal.

This is not to say that I am a Luddite or such.  I love technology.  Yet I miss mindfulness.  I miss the ability to spend an hour watching the ducks at the park without feeling guilty about all the “important” things I should be doing with that time.  I am disturbed by the fact that I cannot listen to music or watch a movie without doing somethings else at the same time – knitting or reading or eating or writing or working on homework – something.  Because there is only so much time, and if it isn’t stacked efficiently, it will… it will what?  Fill to the top and freeze?  Game over?  You lose?  Or will something simply get missed?  The car dirty, the refrigerator empty, the favorite jeans still with the soiled clothes.  A missed deadline.  A poor performance review.  A lost opportunity…  Because you never know when one of those narrow red rectangles is going to drop.

This is by choice.  Most things are – or at least we like to think they are.  Illusion of control and all that jazz.  In the mean time, I’m Tetris-ing in my relaxation time.  60 minutes of massage bookended by 15 minute commutes and prefaced with a 7 minute run to the bank after a 12 minute shower necessitated by a 90 minute run.  Stack away – there’s not a minute to lose.