Timewasting

It's a funny thing, time. I mean everyone knows how time flies when you're having fun and will drag otherwise. But I'm not sure that's always the case. Take last night for example.

Now, traditionally, Thursday is a very busy day for me. Without going into too much detail it's the weekly spot I leave aside do my personal stuff (like washing my hair and things like that) and so I avoid making plans to go out on this day (and so if you need me for anything I'm more likely to respond positively if it's not a Thursday). However, sometimes things happen on Thursdays. On even rarer occasions, a lot happens on Thursdays. And yesterday was one of those Thursdays. It went something like this:

7pm: Meeting at Walthamstow's Chilli 'n Spice. My misguided belief that arriving early would mean leaving the same was trounced by the all powerful notion of Asian Timing. I didn't even eat much since I wanted to leave as soon as possible. Now don't get me wrong; it was a fun and constructive dinner but I was fully conscious of the clock too.

9pm: My neighbour has a minor emergency as I approach home. After dealing with that, I quickly pray, have dinner (ironically if I had eaten in the restaurant I woulda been done faster) read my sabaq and even mange to get my personal stuff out of the way. I'm surprised since this is all something that would have usually taken me a whole evening to do.

10pm: At a time when, on regular weekdays, I would get ready to go to bed, I finally leave for Redbridge where the Collective were already waiting. Two hours of the usual fun and games and cake and mithai galore and I head off for home.

12am: Shower (including obligatory hair-washing) and then bed.

Ok, so on paper it doesn't sound like and probably isn't much. And I did pay for the late end with a late start today so something did give way. But still I did more last night than I do some weekends and it's very fulfilling when you have a checklist of disparate experiences at the end of your day. Y'know those rare moments when you're super-efficient with your time and all just slots and flows into each other and works out with no effort. It's almost a romantic effect and probably similar to the one you get when you spend a whole Sunday morning in bed lazing (alone or not).

It just makes me think of what I do with the free time that I do have on a more regular day. The depressing conclusion is always the same: that it's somehow all been wasted. But as my last example above indicates, it's not really about getting out of the house and attending parties or meetings and contributing to society or making the world a better place; it's more about spending as much time as possible feeling, be it happy, sad, or anything in between.

Of course the question we're left with now is whether to feel is in our own hands or not; I like to think that it totally is. But if that's the case why aren't we always doing so?