Issue No. 15: End-Of-Year Musings & Creating A Time-Rich Life
My most important question for the new year
The past few days I’ve been enjoying the warm buzz of December. Work is slowing down so I’ve been spending days wrapping up my projects and also puttering around the house, doing things like shuffling through books I plan to read & flipping through some new recipes I want to try. Nabeel’s also finishing up his last few days of work after which we get two weeks of holidays, and so conversations around our house have pretty much been around a mix of all of this: some excitement for the new year, some habits we want to sort out, making small plans for our time off.
We’re both in our 40s now and something that matters a lot to us is having a good life, individually and together. We both value hard work and enjoy our jobs, but we equally love having time for each other, family, healthy meals, mild socializing, having a hobby or two, music, movies, all of that good stuff.
A few days ago, we were on our midday coffee break doing a general life catchup. We were hanging out at the kitchen counter, Nabeel was trying to whip up just the right amount of froth on our cappuccinos, and I remember saying to him – I think this year I want to really focus the most on being time-rich.
You know, the past some years in between conversations, I’ve noticed my friends and I say this a lot: Where did the year go? I can’t believe it’s March already, June already, is it December already? It feels like we’re aware of the dates and months in general, but we don’t have an actual grasp on our time.
“I just don’t want to be someone who feels that I didn’t realise where the year went, you know”.
This was something that I’d actually said to Nabeel a couple of years ago and so this coffee break wasn’t really the first time that we were talking about it. But as I’ve learnt more and more about myself, about what gives me real joy, about what makes me feel the most *me*, I’ve been realising that I really want to make time a central character of my story. Of our story.
I think we all understand by now that the pace of the world is not going to slow down anytime soon. But we can slow down the pace of our lives. And I think, as we make our resolution lists and organize routines to take care of all the things, like family, health, rest, I really do believe that the way to achieve AND sustain them, is to go back to the source: creating, reclaiming the time to do all of it.
A time-rich life where you and I can really savor days of the year as much as we can with a gentle awareness of passing time.
I think one of the most beautiful things about life is that we are all always works-in-progress. And this is still a work-in-progress for me too, but I thought for this issue, I could share some things that have helped me in creating a time wealthy approach to life, so far. And as we all wrap up our Decembers with whatever we’re busy with – whether that’s family reunions or someone’s wedding festivities, end-of-year celebrations, maybe a trip somewhere or just quiet time at home - this could be that food for thought that we can take with us as we ease into the new year.
CREATING AN ABUNDANT LIFE
My friend Sumika was visiting me here in Sydney last month and during one of our many couch dates, where we’d order in pizza and chat late into the night, we got talking about the whole concept of wealth.