Where did the day go?

How can it be that I have all the time in the world yet have no time at all? I feel I am one of the most fortunate people: young, able to not work for a period of time, a student, single with no kids -- while some might not view the last point as a plus, it does mean I have fewer time constraints than those who have significant others or little ones.

So what could be the sucker of my time? I've been trying to do the math and came up with these rough estimates of how I spend my time (per week):

1. Spending time with friends - 15 hours

2. Cooking, cleaning, laundry - 5 hours

3. Running or doing yoga - 10-12 hours

4. Spending time on public trans - 7 hours

5. Weekly discussion group - 3 hours

6. Buddhism studies - 6 hours

7. Class and homework - yet to be accurately calculated but will be roughly 30-35 hours

8. Listening to This American Life, Sound Opinions, BBC, reading news, Daily Show or TED.com - 5 hours

9. Spending time on facebook and kicking around online - 21 HOURS!

10. Drinking - if I have one night of partying, that can eat up quite a few more hours than I care to admit, from time of consumption to full recovery. In the past few weeks I've had some goodbye parties for friends leaving Taiwan which have put me out at least 15 hours.. But the goodbye parties are over for the meantime.

Looking at the above list, I'm thinking facebook has got to go! I've been thinking this for a while. I love it... Seeing pictures of long lost friends, the LOLs with people I love, the endless entertainment in following threads and videos, the occasional snoop into private lives of others, like seeing what my best friend from grade school is up to and thinking, "what made her into a republican and OMG! that's the guy she wound up with!?" (the most pathetic and saddest loss of my precious time and brain power).

So that's how I spend my time... And this is how I would like to spend an average weekday:

8am - up, breakfast, shower, coffee, tidy

9am - study Chinese

10am - IMBA study

noon - lunch - preferably with a friend

1pm - IMBA study
3pm - yoga

5pm - head to school

6pm - dinner with classmates

7-10pm - class (nights I don't have class substitute running, cooking, studying)

11pm - home, read, write, meditate, glass of red wine

12pm - bed

I recently listened to a Chrissie Hynde interview on Sound Opinions. She believes people are becoming less creative as a result of things like Facebook and it's taking a toll on the music that's coming out. She said teens used to come home from school and sit on their beds learning to play guitar or doing something creative. Now entire afternoons are spent on facebook. Besides that, I frequently observe people taking pictures of themselves, all throughout their meals and interactions, photographing every moment and living their lives for facebook posts. And I observe myself sometimes catching thoughts and thinking they'd make good status updates... These of course are all the negatives to facebook. I'm sure someone could list all the positives, but to me the negatives still win out. And I know it's not the tools, email or facebook, it's the user. However, I think particularly with facebook they're continually developing new features to make you more involved and sucked in.

So I know I need to stop complaining and do something. I will do something... I'm in the process of devising a plan to change the way I spend my time. I may have to try a few weeks without facebook and email altogether; just calls, skype, blogger, face-to-face interactions. I think if I cut out facebook and email for a while it would feel similar to when I quit smoking: all of a sudden I'll have time to do everything I want in a day with extra time to be creative. I'll stop worrying about my life slipping away... We'll see if I have the will power to disconnect for a while; I feel it building everyday as I wonder where the time went.

But first, let me go check my email and facebook :-)