The Baboon Congress

Bags of Time

49 Comments

Today’s post comes from Verily Sherrilee

Right now I’m feeling pressed for time – I’m almost done with holiday prep and Nonny is coming next week. I have two separate lists and there’s not much time for sitting around. I read this Billy Collins poem last night and love the idea of having bags of time.

It seems like so much more than just my regular old time; I could get boatloads more done!

What would you do with bags of time?

49 thoughts on “Bags of Time”

  1. Great poem!. If I had bags of time I would have te most dust-free home in town, I would do long neglected needle work, rhe closets in my work office would be all organized, and I would have a new Welsh Terrier that would be well trained. No, make rhat two terriers.

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    1. Well-trained dogs sounds really good to me right now. And maybe well-trained cats? Not sure there are enough bags of time in the world for that!

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  2. Are these wide bags of time or long bags of time? When one gets to be my age, one is conscious that one’s time, no matter how capacious, isn’t necessarily guaranteed to be long, and that affects the choices you make as to how to occupy your bag. Also, could I have a bag of money and a bag of health as well?

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    1. I think you can have whichever type bag of time you’d like, long or wide. Or because it’s like a fantasy on the trail some days you can have both.

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      1. Whichever type of bag of time, I don’t think I’d spend any more of it cleaning. I know you are probably wondering how much cleaning I do at present and you’d have to get Robin’s take on that, but my world is clean enough, in my opinion.

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    1. Update: since I keep getting in checkout lines behind the incompetent and/or overly friendly clerk or behind the customer who has a legion of ways to waste time at checkout, such as searching through her purse or rearranging it or walking off to get something else or counting his pennies or arguing about prices and coupons, I would spend some of my bag of time there. Just stood for 20 minutes in line in CVS with a meeting between the customer from hell and the clerk form childhood who decided to start the process all over again with 50 little items. She had a coupon for if she bought $50 worth of makeup which she was supposed to give the clerk first.
      Problem is that it is very painful for me to stand. Could not really move around with five people in line behind me. Decided to see if pharmacy would let me pay there. Would not, even though I had a medical item.
      Yesterday at Cub it was a sweet little old Swedish gramma who asked to go in front of me with her one item compared to my five. Smiled sweetly at clerk and me as she searched for Cub gas card (for a $2.87 purchase), then searched for where she wanted to place the card back in purse, somewhere in the depths. Then smiled sweetly at me and clerk while she decided if she was going to give him a ten or a twenty. Chose the twenty. Then decided she was going to give him the 87 cents, which had to be dredged from the purse, while smiling sweetly. The she decided to stay there and use the little desktop to reorganize her purse, making a point to smile sweetly while I waited to get to the card machine to pay for the groceries which had been checked out. . That one was good entertainment because Sandy was not out in the car waiting for me like today and yesterday my back was not too bad.

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  5. Elwood P. Dowd: [talking about Harvey] Did I tell you he could stop clocks?
    Dr. Chumley: To what purpose.
    Elwood P. Dowd: Well, you’ve heard the expression; ‘his face would stop a clock’.
    Dr. Chumley: Mm-hmm.
    Elwood P. Dowd: Well, Harvey can look at your clock… and stop it. And you can go anywhere you like, with anyone you like, and stay as long as you like, and when you get back… not one minute will have ticked by.

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    1. my sggestion steve is to do the tiemlines scrapbook of storeis already existing orones you add and insert.
      it ould be great. dont make the orld go through the 400,000 pages you are going to leave in a file.

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  8. i have always had time issues. i am very poor at guesstimates of how long it ill take. if i think an hour its three and if i think a day it ill be a week.
    a bag of time would allow me to do stuff when i think of it and get it done because i ouldnt have to worry avbout getting the other 6 things on my agenda that really need to get done.
    if i could have all the time i wanted for everything that came up i would be able to do it all.
    i have taken the corses on time management and so i am very aare of ho wring i am and in the new world of agile development and the use of time to get the things that matter done i have seen how to assemble a plan on what to , how to , in what order to, get things done but it is still possible to diddle and putz into the late mode i am familiar with.
    if i could have elwood p dowds friend harvery give me the option to go off and spend as long as i like doing whatever id like and when i come back not a monent woould have passed ,,, i would be a happy man. to go away and take x amount of time without screwing p the to do list i have set myseld in the midst of wold be heaven. it might be asking a lot. i get interestd in things at the drop of a hat and fade off into never never land discovering the wonders of new stuff. a bag of time would be just what the doctor ordered.

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    1. I am often the opposite with guesstimating time – especially if it’s something I’m not looking forward to. For example, I’ve had “put hoses away” on one list or other for at least a month. I keep putting it off because I think I don’t have time. But part of my brain is well aware that this task will take less than 30 minutes. When I finally do put the hoses away I’ll be happy that it didn’t take to long and kick myself for putting it off so long. Typical.

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  9. If I had bags of time I would allot one per week to going through the house and clearing it of excess stuff and reorganizing what we (I) decide to keep. With another bag I would just sit. Maybe read. Maybe watch the neighborhood go by from the front steps – possibly meet a friend for a cup of coffee or a glass of wine – but mostly just sit and enjoy the small pleasures world. Smell its aromas, listen to its sounds, watch its flora and fauna (domesticated and not). Sit.

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  10. Projects take more time than I guess, such as completing an ed. manual when I was in the business. Tasks I often allow too much time, such as dusting the high places in our apt. What amazes me the most is if I do a personal creative project and do not set a deadline or even think about when it will be done, In the end I am surprised how quickly it was finished, such as carving or painting or completing a manuscript for a book.
    OT: i need your help. Every morning I put a heat pack on my eyes and a cold pack on my neck. If I show signs of becoming a cracked pot, you will have to tell me.
    (The drummer is ready to add rimshots to your comments.)

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  11. Well, after spending all morning at church playing bells, and then napping, i now have the time I need to clean the house and get ready for Thanksgiving.

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  12. I’d like to bake cookies once a week or so in a sparkling clean kitchen. Also I’d take a walk every day for about 45 minutes or an hour, with some good music on a walkman or some modern digital equivalent. There was a time when I went for walks regularly, but just haven’t found the time in the past ten or fifteen years.

    Mostly, though, I’d use the time to just do more of the things I do now. Sit and read on the couch with a cat or two or three. Putter around in the yard (unless the weather has something to say about it). Take on another volunteer shift. Go out for breakfast.

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  13. A couple years ago when I woke up at 6 feeling relatively rested, as I just did, I would be excited for all this time to use up in my fun ways. Now I think of the additional time I have to kill.

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  15. dale missed a button today. i got a note from him last night saying the guest blog i sent in would be there today but…. i dont think we were really done with the bags of time concept.

    time is what we have and what we dont have. bags of time is such a wonderful concept. more so as we get closer to the other end of the spectrum. it has stopped being funny when people who die are only 65 or 70 and they are said to be young… 65 year olds were not young when i was a kid. bags of time is really waht we have to figure out. its not time but how we choose to use it that we deal with now. choosing to do something is choosing not to do everything else.

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    1. At almost 72, I have trouble not thinking of myself as OLD. I still have the 1950’s view of when a person is too old. With all this medicine being done on me, I keep thinking I am too old to be worth it.

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  16. I’m wishing a had a little bag to time right now. Picking up Nonny at the airport in about an hour and if I had a bag of time, I could get a couple of more tasks in. As it is, I decided to sit down for a half hour or so and collect myself. Not that I have to collect myself for Nonny, but I really turned up the heat on stuff to get done the last week or so!

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  18. After my divorce I had–for a few years–bags of time and enough physical fitness to use time well. I remember those years fondly. My buddy each morning was Katie, my second English setter. We would leave home early in the morning and make the seven-minute commute to the Minnehaha Off-Leash Dog Park. With public radio feeding into my ears through a headset Walkman, I would wander the bluffs, woods and river shores with Katie. I walked a route each day that was beautiful, physically demanding and interesting (it included artifacts from very early times).

    There was an odd group of free spirits, all dog lovers, who used the park at the same time each morning. Of course, we met each other and shared a kind of friendship that in some ways resembled the friendship that unites Trail Baboon. Any club made up of dog lovers who don’t have a regular job to go to will tend to attract unique people: musicians, writers, historians, teachers on summer break and others. Good people.

    Our morning hike took about an hour and a half to walk. It was a perfect way to start a day. I miss that now.

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  19. I would certainly get a blog post up. I’ve tried repeatedly. I think I need some kind of permission to Blog post – Add. I’m out of time though. Again.

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  20. I’m hitting a stretch where there are no breaks in the schedule, and that’s what starts to drive me round the bend. I the concept (thanks, Harvey – above) of having time stand still while you go off and do something… I don’t want to miss anything, but here comes the season where there are too many things I want to do, happening simultaneously.

    With more bags of time, I would:
    – finish my mom’s photo book project
    – help mom send out some thanksgiving cards
    – finish my Living Will (just went to a class on Advanced Directives)
    – finish checking off my last week’s To Do list
    – finish the book for tomorrow’s book club (I’m on page 20)
    – pick up Possession from the library, which we are reading for next BBC
    – get up to city for next BBC (unclear at this point)
    – start Christmas letter (the mass mailing one)
    …

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  25. There is a new post today, but few comments, so it appears not many have found it. See the link below this post where it says “Next Post” or follow the link in your e-mail if you are following that way.

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