It’s Sunday morning (just), I’ve been up for hours - doing this, doing that - and a short time window has appeared where I’m not being expected to be somewhere else, doing something else.
I am therefore in the study, sitting in front of a text editor, writing. The speakers are filling the room with Laura Marling - a musician I discovered quite by chance.
The children are in the garden “helping” tidy up the various remnants of Winter. The task is akin to attacking a cruise ship with lollipop sticks. They haven’t tidied the playroom, which I asked them to do several hours ago. No doubt I will end up doing it.
I’m sat here wondering how long I can get away with having this time to myself before I am summoned. “My” time seems to be incredibly short these days. The effects can be seen in falling Twitter and Tumblr followers, blog visitor numbers falling off a cliff, and a disconnect between myself and those I used to shoot the breeze with each day.
I wish I knew how other people find the time to do the things they do.
It’s going to sound really selfish, but I miss that aspect of being single - having the time to focus on interests - to obsess over things. To read books, watch movies, write software, to try things out on the computer, to listen to music - and I mean just listen - not have it on in the background while you’re washing up.
I can’t remember the last time I went to a coffee shop on my own. Actually I can - it was about three years ago. I had been there about ten minutes when my phone rang, and I had to leave.
Of course all of these complaints are wiped away after a hard day by little people hugging your legs when you walk in the door from work, or proudly leading you by your hand to see their junk model. Tact is brought to the fore as you try to guess what the toilet rolls, cereal packet and kilogram of sticky tape are supposed to be.