My Day

I was doing something the other day when I noticed it was well past dinner time. I don't know what it was, or why I stopped to think about it right then, but my mind latched onto the thought that I didn't get much done in any given day. I began to think about what happens to a "normal" day for me, where it goes and why I have so little productive time.

So I began to look at how a typical day goes for me, one where I go to bed at a decent hour, sleep my required 10 - 12 hours, and where I don't do exercises. This would be any day except Monday, Wednesday, and Friday; these are my exercise days.

Let's assume I don't act foolish; that I go to bed at a decent hour. This means around 11:00 PM. I wake up the following morning sometime between 10:00 AM and 11:00 AM, a full 11 - 12 hours later. Even with this, I am tired when I wake up, usually not feeling like I got a full night's sleep. Nonetheless, we can assume a standard starting time of 10:30 AM, that gets the day going.

The next thing I need to do, after waking up, is just lay there for a bit, sometimes as much as a half an hour, building up the energy I need to launch into the next set of tasks, dressing and toileting. The whole process of transfers, toilets, washing, dental care, more transfers, and dressing usually takes almost an hour, sometimes less, sometimes more, depending on how things go, as it were. So by the time I get to my kitchen table, it can be somewhere between noon and 12:30 PM.

At this point I have had nothing to eat, nothing to drink, and I have not written. So I get that starter part of my day done. I make coffee, I grab something to eat out of the fridge, or not. Some days I just don't feel like eating. Other days I do better. Regardless, by the time I have coffee, eat something, check Facebook, read emails, and write in my blog, it always seems to be around 2:00 PM.

At that point, at around 2:00 PM on any given day, I can start my "productive period". This time space usually lasts for about 2 hours, after which I need a nap or some sort of rest. If I take a nap at around 4:00 PM, or perhaps 5:00 PM, I will usually rest for a couple of hours. I need that rest; it's not optional most days. Every few days I can get by without, but I pay for it the next day, or days.

From 5:00 PM to about 7:30 PM are the dinner hours. I don't always make dinner; I often have leftovers. I also often have company over, usually on Sunday, Wednesday and at least one other day in a week. Then there are those nights where I go to trivia. All of these things, though, follow a similar pattern.

So now it's 7:30 PM and I have been truly productive for about 2 hours of my day. That's it. That's all I get. I do what I can in the evenings, often socializing, sometimes doing laundry, sometimes just resting again. If I get on the couch, say at around 8:00 PM or 9:00 PM, I can easily find myself indolent, trapped there until bedtime. Even so, some evenings will contain an hour or two of activity. I can sometimes find the energy to write, or to tidy up, or to work on small projects.

Mostly, though, by 8:00 PM in the evening, I have spent my energy allotment for the day; I'm done. While I may have lots of mental energy, my physical and emotional stores are exhausted. And this is with only 2 productive hours in my day.

If your day had only 2 hours in it, if you could only accomplish 2 hours worth of "stuff" on any given day, what would you do with it? Shopping? Reading? Work? It's not much of a window. And oh, that's without exercises. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I lose another hour to exercises. Those days are already full.

I've written this blog, had coffee, had a snack, eaten some grapes. Now I am going to do laundry. That will be my day, all of it. I'll be ready for it to be over, just as dinner begins.