{"id":27063,"date":"2020-11-05T07:43:11","date_gmt":"2020-11-05T13:43:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=27063"},"modified":"2020-11-04T09:45:34","modified_gmt":"2020-11-04T15:45:34","slug":"the-squandered-gift-of-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2020\/11\/05\/the-squandered-gift-of-time\/","title":{"rendered":"The Squandered Gift Of Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I mentioned<\/a>, I left a full-time job for a return to consulting, and I’ve got a part time contract for the nonce, but I’ve been exploring other opportunities. I have had a lot of conversations over the last couple of months, but none have resulted in a job offer or contract. Sales pipeline<\/em>, they call it. Discouraging<\/em>, I call it.<\/p>\n

I have been here before: When a full-time contract ends, I start reaching out looking for more work, but I also think, Man, I’m going to have so much free time!<\/em> I start thinking about household projects I can complete. Did I mention I was painting my fence and deck again, and that I started this spring? Yeah, that’s not done yet, and I should have all this new free time, ainna?<\/p>\n

Well, that’s not how it ends up. I get up in the morning, get the kids ready for school, stop by the gym a couple times a week, hit the grocery or the warehouse club, get home, maybe write a blog post or two, hit the job boards and maybe reach out to a company or two (working that discouragement<\/strike> pipeline), do some work on my part time contract, have some lunch, pick the boy or boys up from school, take them to martial arts a couple times a week, have dinner, do the evening chores, and sit down to read for an hour or so before bed. I spend parts of days at the laundromat<\/a> or on household<\/a> repairs<\/a>. What extra time?<\/em><\/p>\n

The gym can cut a couple hours off of the day at the beginning, and when I’m not working full time, I pick the youngest up after school on time instead of having him hang out in their “extended care” program (it’s not like he has extra-curricular activities in These Days) which cuts another two hours out of that extra time every day. And I don’t have a lot of blocks of an hour or thirty minutes between the daily activities–so I spend the time sitting at the desk, reading a blog or something. I certainly wouldn’t have the time to get the paint out and slap it on a couple pickets–or would I?<\/p>\n

Then, a few weeks into the process, I notice how the cash flow is tightening. So I start getting concerned. I have a lot of places to tighten, of course: Not so many impulse purchases of CDs, fewer dollars-a-day stuff, not eating out, cutting the charitable giving. We’re not in dire straits by any sense of the imagination, but I get to thinking: What if I don’t get more work? What if this contract ends and I am completely out of work?<\/em> I mean, even when I have a full time job, I tend to think I am only a couple weeks from being laid off, unemployed, and without prospects as an old man in a young persons’ industry.<\/p>\n

So when I worry, I spend more time hitting the job boards instead of doing something else–writing, working on a new skill, or those aforementioned household projects. I get nervous when a day or so passes where I don’t find somewhere to apply or reach out. And, of course, the moments stolen with news and politics don’t lower my stress levels.<\/p>\n

And then I get a full time job or contract, and all the “free time” and the promise it offered evaporates, and I really didn’t take advantage of it while I could.<\/p>\n

This has happened before, of course, and I can explain all the stages of it very clearly. However, I’ll go through them all the same.<\/p>\n

I’m a little afraid it’s how I live my whole life, though, frittering away time. Or maybe I just need to pick a better way of frittering.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I mentioned, I left a full-time job for a return to consulting, and I’ve got a part time contract for the nonce, but I’ve been exploring other opportunities. I have had a lot of conversations over the last couple of months, but none have resulted in a job offer or contract. Sales pipeline, they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27063"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27063\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27066,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27063\/revisions\/27066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}