Making Time

Posted by Colin Harvey Oct 24, 2009

On Thursday I posted a blog to the effect that with travel included, I was working an average of 49 hours a week. I ended the ost by musing that I'd need to work out how I was going to find time to write.

That I'm writing this gives you part of the answer of course: As I type these words, Kate is setting the table for breakfast, pouring orange juice, clattering cutlery. Normally I'd do that, but hers is the unfussy, demonstrative nature that just gets on with things, and if she does it, it gives me a few more minutes to write this.

The other factor is that amongst that 49 hours were some areas that could be multi-purposed. I have gaps between lectures totalling 3 or 4 hours, depending on which week it is, when even before I knew how much time I'd need I was heading for the library, to post blogs, read or write. On the journey into Bristol, I have maybe 30 minutes when I can do the same, and on the journey to uni, a further 20 minutes.

Those two factors alone give me back 6 hours of my 49. There are a further couple of tricks which verge on the dark arts: At the hospital I don't have a pc, but I can take a pen and a piece of scrap paper -- as Doctor Who said to The Master in Last of the Time Lords-- "You can't stop us thinking." Quite right. Since some of my assignments involve scribbling poems which come in short bursts, that's an ideal time to write them. It's dull, repetitive work more suited to an automaton, but paradoxically it frees me up to think.

Lastly, there's the Thursday evening plenary lecture. I don't mind attending lectures then, even seminars, but I draw the line at silent Russian film screenings on a dark night. That slot might be reclaimed, giving me 4 extra hours a fortnight.

So in total, I think that I'm probably closer to 39 hours a week off the clock than 49. That might not sound much, but as someone who's homing in on his 49th birthday, I can tell you now that the difference between 39 and 49 is a lot more than it seems.

Not that it's going to be easy if I do NaNoWriMo, but whether I do NaNoWriMo at all will depend on discussions with my tutor over the next week.