Ridiculous, Crazy: Life

I don't spend enough time on my blog. I don't spend enough time on my hobbies, either. According to my significantly better half, I don't spend enough time cleaning up after myself. That does seem to leave quite a large portion of my time not doing much, and I'm not sure what it is I actually do, when I am not doing anything useful.

Life actually happened for me quite recently. I am now a father to a wonderful little girl, who is a magnet for spare time; I can spend hours just staring at her, joyfully mimicking her coos and gentle sighs. I also spend a lot of time unable to do anything else, because "I've got the baby on me", which invariably means I am unwilling to move (to clean up after myself).

There are 168 hours in a week. That is a reasonable amount of time to share between projects, I think. I spend about 40 asleep, all being well. There is the obligatory 40 hours at work, and probably 6 hours travelling to and from said Hell workplace. I imagine I spend around 8 hours, outside those previously consumed in this exercise, eating. Menial tasks such as washing and dressing myself probably equate to roughly 5 hours a week. Other tasks that require a little bit of brain power or elbow grease, like cooking and cleaning, take up maybe 10 hours. Alright, that's 109 hours so far... what do I do for the remaining 59? I suppose there is additional travel, and weekly tasks like shopping for food - that probably uses an extra 4 hours. I will allocate 5 hours for socialising, although it really does depend on what is going on, but I guess average is the key here. So, 50 hours to find. I can't imagine I spend 50 hours staring lovingly at my daughter, but I can easily believe that I spend that much time feeding and burping her, bouncing her on my knee, changing her nappy, changing her clothes, putting her down, picking her up... you get the picture.

It is strange to think of the time when I wasn't a father, and didn't even have the urge to become a father. I can't say it has been all plain sailing, but I am very much enjoying fatherhood. I am lucky, I suppose, that I don't suffer from panic and worry in the same way that other people do, because I can see that it has a real strain on the body and mind of the victim, but also those around them will feel the tension and it will test relationships of all descriptions.

My conclusion is that time doesn't stop for any reason, and quantifying useful activity and efficiency is going to take up far too much time. It is better to just live, and make sure you enjoy every second you are given.