Tuesday 10 April 2007

NO MATTER how hard I try to manage my time, there is never enough of it to complete life's tasks. In my proverbial house, there are many mansions — some of them partly furnished, most of them derelict and all of them half-built. The words "If only I had more time," have haunted my life as a wistful refrain. We mere mortals can interact with time by playing for it, biding it, taking it, telling it, buying it and even killing it but we cannot control it and, in the end, it runs out for us all.

The time has come to stop the clock, to take a long breath between the short moments, and prepare to make the most of time while it lasts. The only way to do this is to enjoy it and manage it properly. I, however, must strive to achieve order out of pure chaos. I am that pickled specimen in a dusty jar in the British Science Museum labelled "Living Proof of Chaos Theory". There is such a place as Bedlam, because I have lived right in the middle of it for all of my life but I have somehow managed to endure inside its crowded halls and crumbling walls to achieve quite a lot in my shortish lifetime.

My career has spanned the breadth of the employment market with various jobs including a waitress; a sales assistant; an admin assistant; a receptionist; a postgirl; a conference organiser; a computer teacher; a tutor in Chinese cookery; a journalist; and a barrister. My academic accomplishments include an LlB Hons; a professional legal qualification; achievements in photography, British Sign Language, advanced web design, computers and lots more that do not immediately spring to mind. I am at present (and this is not necessarily in any order) a journalist; bread-winner; wife; mother of not-one-but-four teenagers; web designer; photographer; epic fantasy author (unpublished - for the moment); and now blogger. I juggle these tasks with mixed degrees of competency but aspire to succeed in all. In the effort to achieve excellence, however, I often end up accomplishing little within the limitations of a day: tail-chasing can be an exhausting pastime.

So comes the reason for this blog site. Despite the orderly chaos of my life and despite the limitations of time and money, I am going to achieve the goals set out in the standfirst to this site and I am going to do all of them within five years. I wish to use this space as a record of my achievements - a time line of events - and something that will encourage me, and hopefully others, to succeed in getting time just right.

3 comments:

ginkers said...

Why didn't you mention the roller-skates when it came to waitressing?

I wish you all the best in both the blog and the control of time. Could I recommend the book "Tuscan Grappa and the Masters of Time" by Andrea Zanfi which I think could be indispensable...

ginkers said...

That picture looks remarkably like a cave on Nui (or however you spell it). Is this your latest property aspiration...

Anonymous said...

I sooo know where you’re coming from, my friend. Time is ticking. Our eyes show that we are tired. The grey that spring from our hair betrays us. Our lips show how many cigarettes have been smoked or how many glasses of wine have been drunk. But when both time and life both run out – it's about what we didn’t do not what we did….
See how deeply you now have me thinking about timelines…?