How do you divide your day?

Do you look at the hours you have from the time you wake up to the time you go to sleep at night?

Do you divide it into work, rest and play?

Do you divide your day between morning, afternoon and evening?

I have at one time or another in my life tried to divide my day in all of these ways and more, but lately I have stumbled upon a better way to divide the day.

Instead of looking at each days events as an insurmountable to do list, I have recently started employing a new way of dividing the day into time for me and time for others. The fact is lately I have spent less and less time on what makes me happy.

At the start of the year I wrote  a list of intentions for the year. Things I wanted to achieve by the time 2010 was over. Some of the things on that list included saving more money, making time to practise my singing, learning another language, being organised, learning to cook more and spending more time with Ben. I have found however, that I have been dedicating less and less time to these things for me and have been focusing more of my time on things for other people. The division of time was all wrong.

I was, until a week ago, working a job which was making my sick, tired and generally not a very nice person to be around. I was miserable and it was starting to show in every aspect of my life. I finally stopped and thought about why I was doing this job. I had started the job because I was pregnant and at the time it was the only job I could get that would be suitable as my belly expanded. Circumstances changed. I was no longer able to convince myself that I was happy in this job because the one driving force for me to stay was now gone. I was not doing something that I wanted to do.

That one change sparked off a chain reaction for me of wanting to spend less time on doing things because other people expected them of me and start looking at those things that are important in my life:

• I love helping others and I love teaching, so I applied for a job (and got it) as a teacher
• I want to lose the weight I put on, so Ben and I have started encouraging each other to exercise more often
• I want to spend more time with Ben, so I have started trying to find time for us to be together in a fun way

I guess the important thing is that there is time for both parts of me. Time for myself and time for others. The balance was wrong before and I am now starting to get it back in the right order.

Image by FreeWine (flickr)