“If I Only Had The Time…”

~ Elizabeth

For years I harbored the fantasy that some day I would have enough time to do a whole variety of undone tasks. I would take the photos out of that picture killing 1970’s plastic and put them in archival albums. I would prune my cookbooks, giving away all that I would never use, despite my best intentions. “Cheese making from your goat’s milk,” for instance since I haven’t owned a goat since 1976. I would definitely get up into the attic and see what is still in one piece. The last time I climbed the ladder to get down the old cloth diapers, I found that the mice had found them first!

Then there are the unread books. If I only had the time I would finally get through all the unread nineteenth century English novels assigned in my 1968 course on the nineteenth century English novel. After all, I owned the books already. And War and Peace! Surely I would have a deeper understanding of it than when I read it as a lonely, love struck college freshman. Unbelievably, or neurotically enough, it still bothers me that I sped read Tolstoy instead of giving him the attention I am sure he deserved.

The wallpaper in the bathroom has been peeling for a few years. And I didn’t do a great job putting it up in the first place. (I didn’t have the time to do it carefully!) I even own new rolls to do the job. And what about that kit to make a solar powered miniature carousel for my granddaughter who is now much too old to enjoy it?

Well now that I am experiencing the double whammy of retirement combined with lockdown, the truth has been revealed. The real me is not the Energizer Bunny, just waiting for enough time to get things done. Sadly, the real me more closely resembles the Scottish sheep I encountered in the Highlands. After I waited for her and her friends to cross the road I was trying to navigate, she slowly walked over and flopped down on the edge. That was enough for her that day.

I know the feeling!

37 thoughts on ““If I Only Had The Time…””

  7. It brings home that you were only making excuses not to do what you didn’t really want to do or can’t be bothered to do. I’ve been there too.

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  13. I am with you 100%, Elizabeth. All those things I was going to do, and I ended up in a chair in front of a computer screen writing about not doing them. 🙂
    Best wishes, Pete

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  15. Lol! I thought you were going to say you had started doing all these things now lol!
    Sheep are great though Elizabeth, they know exactly what they want! And if that is too much of an effort for them then they just plomp down & think about things, maybe that the grass looks greener on the other side of the fence. 😉
    Bless you,
    Jennifer

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