Fill

What do we fill ourselves with?  I have been thinking about this a lot lately, trying to decide how I want to fill my time, especially now that I have more time than I have had in a long while.  Time is a funny concept, in the sense that we can not purchase more of it, or give away huge chunks of it that we don't feel like living through (or even sleeping through) on a particular day.  It just passes, whether we want it to or not.

How I choose to fill my time says a lot about who I am, what I love, what I value, even my opinion on how important time itself is.  About a month ago I had a blank canvas of time, I could have filled it with anything from a job to a trip around the world (so maybe money would not have permitted the latter).  Since then I have steadily created routines, certain weekly things that I want to fill my time with.  Though right now my time is only routinely filled with about a 25 hour/6 day a week work week, a weekly Bible study, and church, my other time seems to be quickly cluttered, or in a positive light, enhanced.  

I throw in that hour run every other day, because it makes me feel good, and aside from the joint smashing effects, it's healthy.  I try to read or write daily because it's something I love and it's a way I can continue to learn and develop thoughts outside of an academic setting.  Then there's job searching, looking for that ideal job is important unless I always want to pursue my current part-time occupation (I'm going to answer that with no, this is not an until retirement career).  Spending time with my girlfriends is important because they help shape me and ground me, and of course it's important to contact my family regularly to stay in touch with them.  Then having a boyfriend takes time, without it how could two people connect and grow in a relationship?  Of course there are the trivial, yet necessary time guzzlers of life, like eating, bathing, sleeping, and the last one I probably invest too much time in, but getting ready -- the head to toe preening ritual that I devote at least an hour to daily.

With all that said, with all that time taken, or rather filled, it doesn't leave much time.  I know I can fill more of my time, I know at this point in my schedule it is possible to be far busier, but are we really suppose to fill every second of our time to the point where we're actually stuffing things into time?  Yesterday I was thinking about volunteering somewhere once a week, and though at this point that it conducive to my time, there is a point where I become guilty of trying to overfill my time.

I guess it works something like this, if I'm relating back to the empty canvas that is: splashing paint all over my canvas with various shapes and pictures is a lot more interesting and fulfilling than a plain white expanse, but too much color, too many crazy shapes and varied pictures, and my canvas starts making everyone who looks at it dizzy -- for good reason, too.