I love learning new things, whether that be new gear, new editing techniques, composing new music, new pieces of piano music, new art, new artists, etc. I love to perpetually learn. So most of what I blog ends up being lessons I'm learning experientially. This will prove no exception.
"Ain't nobody got time fo' dat." - Sweet Brown
We all have things that we wish we could do. It may be to get into better shape, read more, call someone more often, pick up a musical instrument, and suddenly, the list begins to become frightfully long. I, for one, want every one of those and more. We look at such a list and hold it up against the necessities of reality like work and sleep and in all-too many cases determine "I don't have enough time for that." Even if we never say it with our mouths, we say it with our lives. That's where I'm at. Starting a small business keeps you busy, things are starting to pick up, and I imagine things might only get busier. I find that I'm not composing or practicing piano nearly as much as when I was in college. There's just not enough time. I was sort of complaining about this to a friend when my friend responded with a statement that I heard a hundred times before but was no less true. It went something like this:
"You make time for what you care about."
This statement normally elicits two main reactions and I had them both! The first reaction is that of injury. While some people respond with hostility and defensiveness, I knew the statement was true regardless of the utterer's motives or knowledge of the details in my life. So I felt injured and felt the appropriate guilt. Then I realized that I didn't have to be injured as there was an alternative response to this truth: inspiration. So bear with me.
How we spend our time shows what we truly care about. Some of those things are good and we should care about them more, like work and family. Being a good spouse should always take precedence over something like reading, exercising, etc. However, there are things that we have time for, like watching another movie, surfing the web, sleeping in on Saturday, utter relaxing, etc., that we care about MORE than those things we wish we could do. Our excuses ring hollow when we say we don't have time for exercise yet we binge watch entire seasons of a TV series on Netflix. It's not that we don't have time for exercise, it's that we care more about that Netflix TV series.
This doesn't have to be a downer. Instead, this should be inspiring! We have time to do the things we care about! No matter who we are, we all have the same 24 hours in a day. It's up to us how to use that time. While we don't have time for everything, we DO have time for the things we care about. We just have to determine how important and how committed to it we really are and start making time for it!
So I know I am trying to further commit myself to those things I care about, and I invite you to join me! No matter what, in the end, we will make time for what we care about.