You Don't Have Time, or You're Not Making Time?
I've been a procrastinator all my life, and when I'm super stressed out all I can ever focus on is the clock. Am I taking too long to finish? Will I have enough time to write today? Will my book ever be done?
A lot of the time, though, I find myself saying I don't have time as just some sort of excuse. Because in reality, I do have time. I have a lot of time. I just tell myself I don't because then I don't feel as bad about not finishing what I needed to get done. And now using this excuse has become a big problem for me.
And maybe it has for you, too. Or, maybe it has and you don't even realize it! It took me a long time before I realized that "I don't have time" was an excuse rather than the truth (okay, sometimes it was the truth. But for the most part, it's just an excuse.)
I was in the car with my older sister one day, talking about life. She mentioned some trouble she was having with a friend about how this person was making her feel like her priorities weren't in order (long story short, my sister is a mom yet still takes time to paint her nails on a regular basis.) As we discussed this, my sister said something along the lines of, "Saying you don't have time for things is just an excuse. I make the time to paint my nails because I enjoy doing them, and as a cosmetologist, it's an example of my work." And it hit me, right then and there, that more often than not when I say I don't have time, it's just an excuse. I do actually have time, I just don't want to set that time aside to write. Yikes.
So, to see how much time I really do have in a day, I decided to record what I did yesterday and label all the times I could've used for writing, but didn't.
Okay, so this is not a very detailed schedule. But, I can still pick out at least five areas of time I could've devoted to writing, but didn't. I could've woken up earlier, I could've squeezed in some writing time while I was waiting to leave for work, I could've written before dinner, etc. So even though in my mind I've convinced myself that I don't have time to write, you can see here that that is just not true!
Again, sometimes it's true. But for the most part, we writers tend to use time as an excuse so we feel better about not writing. But in the end, we still don't feel too pleased with ourselves.
So what about you? Do you actually not have time to write, or are you not just making time? If you're unsure, look back on your day and see if there were any instances where you could've made time to write but didn't. You might just find that you have a lot more time than you thought you did!
"But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." Romans 5:8