Sunday, February 5, 2012

Stewardship Sundays

I'm posting from West Texas, taking a real vacation. I'll post later about why this is a REAL vacation, despite not being in the Caribbean...

But it's Sunday, which means that it's time to take inventory of how I managed my resources this past week.

It was a busy week of prepping for vacation, with packing and orienting our dog sitter/house sitter. And of course the standard week events, plus big work events for BestestHusband and a mommy event for me. So in theory, I needed to use my time well. But did I?

Well, I started measuring the amount of time I wasted on the computer. Some time on the computer is spent wisely. There's real work to be done on the computer. I didn't count that as wasted time. I just counted the small intervals of wasted time spent surfing blogs, Facebook, and discussion boards. And tried to keep a running tally on my stopwatch. My technique wasn't perfect, but it gave me a good peek at how egregious my time wastage is.

I averaged an hour and a half per day of time wastage. Yes, an hour and a half every day. It was frittered away, mostly in 10 minute increments, generally while taking breaks from refereeing sibling disputes. I felt justified in the moments, as it definitely lowered my blood pressure; but in retrospect, I know that it was a horrible misuse of time. Lots of time. Time that I generally would tell you I don't have. Yikes.

So I'll need to consider how I can break that bad habit. Perhaps this week's break from my usual routine will be a good interlude that will allow for enduring change.

Food wasted:
Turkey leg frozen at Thanksgiving and revived, but uneaten at the first meal, and consequently sketchy in my eyes (I think it had survived 6 meals)
A few smooshed blueberries

That's about it. We left our dogsitter with the request to eat all of the perishables in the fridge. So any further waste is on her shoulders. Ok, so that's not necessarily fair. But hey, we're not actually home to keep track of it. And at least we didn't just throw it all out when we left...

Hope you had a great weekend despite the Pats' big loss!


2 comments:

  1. I love the idea of being accountable with my online time! My DH and I recently discussed fasting & praying occasionally as a spiritual exercise - especially praying for the faith-growth of our children. I told him giving up my internet browsing would be a bigger sacrifice than food - and would allow me to give my kids more of my undivided attention.

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    1. Identifying internet time as misuse of my resources was definitely the low-hanging fruit of my life. Now comes the challenge of making changes!

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