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Welcome! Thanks for joining me today. I am hopping with Romance Writers Weekly. When you get to the end of my post be sure to click the link to go to the next one.
Today’s topic revolves around what we are going to do with our “extra day” this year, being a leap year.
To be honest, I never thought much about leap year, giving us an extra day. I have always just cruised along noting the strangeness of the idea, but since this question came up, I have been thinking about what I should do with my extra day.
All the time we as a culture complain about not having enough time. I’ll be honest, now that I am an empty nester and my kids are basically on their own, they swoop in like seagulls after a French fry from time to time, but I am not in charge of their comings and goings, I wonder how I ever managed it all.
I am embarrassingly lucky, that I have a husband who believes in me to have me stay home and work on this crazy writing career. We have also lived
frugally our entire marriage, so financially we can swing it.
Being able to be home writing affords me more time than I ever imagined, which isn’t always a benefit. I can go a whole day having researched names for a secret society and get no words down on paper.
After considering all the extra I already have, I wanted to make sure what I am going to do on February 29, will be noteworthy in some way. I think this leap year I am going to use it to do one thing I have been putting off, yet to be determined (I still have a few days), Choose four books laying around my house, to earmark for finishing by July first, and I am going to do one thing for someone else. Perhaps, I’ll start my morning off at my favorite café, that I don’t go to enough and offer to pay for the bill of the next person who comes in.
While I’m not taking this entirely seriously, I think it is a great way to consider how we normally spend out time. We all have the same twenty-four hours in a day, but why do some people find a way to do a bounty of things in that time, and others cannot? Sure, there are physical, emotional, mental, reasons why we may be limited in our daily lives, I get it. What I am talking about are all of us, who flop on the couch in the evening and wonder, “What did I actually accomplish today?”
Too many days I end the day, not having done what I planned, and I’m drained, but on those days when I am uber productive I chatter away at my husband about how much I accomplished and end the day energized.
I am as guilty as anyone to get lost in the weeds, but I find when I fill my down time with things, I love it makes the boring or difficult stuff easier.
There is a commercial out for an audio book subscribing service where the wife says goodbye to her husband, who comments about how tough her new commute is. It shows her listening to the audiobooks on a bus, then a train, then a ferry, then a taxi that drops her off back at her house. You think it is the end of the day, but when she gets in the house her husband mentions that she works from home. This makes me laugh, but as someone who works from home, I understand that need to force into your schedule the things you love.
So, my suggestion for all of us, is spend some time this leap year day and do a time audit of how you spend your free time. Are there places you could do the things that you love in between doing the things you have to do? I think it would make the world a happier place if we got back to what energizes us instead of making the most important things those things that drain us. Have a happy Leap Year everyone!
Next up we have Leslie Hachtel: