Thoughts on Busy-ness and Time

You know the old saying, "It takes money to make money"? I have been thinking about how it takes money to make a whole lot of other things too.

It takes money to make time. This could be turned in the opposite direction in so many ways, but let's just stick with my train of thought for a moment and then you can go off and think of all the ways you could dispute it. (grin) When you don't have quite enough money, so much extra time has to go in to thinking up all the different ways you can eek out an extra dollar here and there. You find yourself doing things like going to two (or three) grocery stores on discount grocery day so you can get the best deals at both stores to save yourself an extra 3% off the total bill or washing out ziplock bags so you can re-use them. Don't get me wrong, I abhor waste and love saving a buck, but when you *have* to do it, it can take the fun out of it. It would be really lovely to be able to *choose* to do it, or every once in a while be able to say, "I don't feel like I have the time to do this today".

It takes money to have friends. Of course one can certainly have friends without money. However, often you want to invite your friends over. It is seen as rude to not offer your friends a beverage and a snack. When you have to worry about the dollars it would take to have friends over, even just for the cost of a beverage and a snack, it really takes all the zip out of that too.

There are so many things that it just takes a few dollars to do, but when you don't have those few dollars to be care-free with, you can really be limited in so many ways.

One other completely different thought: Busy-ness is relative...

...and is something I am learning a little about. We can be very busy, but be inefficient with our time. Sometimes keeping a time journal can help, sometimes that can be a time waster in itself. I do notice that when I have kept a time journal I do keep to the "important" stuff because I certainly don't want to have to write down that I stared off into space for five minutes deciding what to do next!

Sometimes I really want to accomplish or learn something, but don't do anything towards it because the "whole" task seems like such a big deal. For example, I have been dancing around eating healthier for a long time. Learning about eating healthy AND learning all the cooking/shopping/other skills to eat healthy is such a BIG thing. You just have to take one little thing and jump in. I really wanted to make beans, but thought that the whole soaking the beans and whatever else you had to do to them was out of by grasp (I am really low on the cooking skills graph, ok!?). The other day, I picked up a package of black beans that had directions on the back for all the soaking and boiling. Now, I have made beans. Now, I will remember how to do it again. Now, I can move on to something else. Did it take me a long time to learn how to cook beans? No. Is it going to take me a long time to learn all the things I want to learn to know how to cook healthy? Yes, but if they are broken down into simple things like cooking beans, or making one new recipe or learning one new simple thing every week, eventually you will get there (even if busy-ness is standing in your way).

Treadmill Dance Fever!

Well, I suppose that now that I know how to embed videos, it is only fitting that I share another, right? It was a long weekend for us this weekend and our family decided to go bowling. They show videos on the TV screens, which is not always wunderbar as some of those videos were not really something I wanted my children exposed to (read: women grinding in bikinis do not happen to be under my list of aspirations for my daughters...and *nothing* to do with the "milkshake" song is on that list either). However, there was an amazing little video that I saw with some wacky guys doing a choreographed treadmill "dance". This looks like so much fun. If I had numerous treadmills, this would definitely be on my top ten list to try. Enjoy!

New skill- Learning how to embed a video (aka gorilla love)

This video absolutely moved me. I cried like a baby, but I *am* the sentimental kind.
This is my first time embedding a video, so hopefully it works and I can say I learned a new skill today.

Simple to Start

We are going to make an attempt at getting back into Blogging here. I am reading a book called The Kind Life by Alicia Silverstone. I am only one chapter in, but so far both of the first two chapters have began with some really great quotes/info, so I thought I would share them.

Apparently, the original definition of diet is: (noun) a way of living, or thinking, a day's journey. Quite a bit different from everything attached to the word 'diet' today, isn't it? I am really trying to get in touch with what I eat and make healthier choices, but it so convenient just to eat/make something out of a box. I don't know if I could be vegan like Alicia, but I am making baby steps to a better diet. Pass the quinoa please.

Let food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food.
Hippocrates, the father of Western medicine, 460-377 BC

Even Hippocrates knew better way back then. How far we have come, yet how backwards we are.