Getting the timing right...

Yesterday I went to a funeral and also got the confirmation of some very sad family news!
So today I'm looking at how my time disappears on things that are less important than others and trying to work out some of my priorities ........this is not a selfish act but truly meant in honour of those that don't have the time to consider what to spend it on!

Over the years I've always kept some sort of diary, so now you can imagine how many of them there are. I always have trouble remembering when something happened or have to ask "When did we have the extension built?" or "How long ago was that holiday in Naples?" and could often be found rummaging through the old diaries to check but more usually getting distracted by plenty of other memories. So once I'd stopped working  and had time to spare I decided to create my timeline! This would be in excel so searchable and then came the long process of reading through all the diaries and converting those precious memories into data on a spreadsheet. I hadn't got very far in the past two years but I have to say the amount I had done was looking good, all colour coded rows showing things like my most important events in red, to miscellaneous entries in no colour at all, with employment, health, family events, friends events etc all different colours and of course a record of our holidays in sunny yellow!

To be honest it was becoming a chore and I often used to procrastinate on the laptop then realise I had no more time to add to it.....my timeline was taking up my time! So today I have decided to stop and I've printed out what I've done so far, (may scribble on it in pen if I feel the need) and will put it in my special folder of family history with a note to say "If you are interested in more go find my diaries". Of course I've saved the excel file in various places so I could add to it later if I feel the need.

About a decade ago I'd decided to compile the family trees for hubby's family and for each of my parent's families. I couldn't go back further than my grandparents as they were immigrants with very few records and were no longer with us to ask, in fact they had died long before I was born. My intention had been to show my children the width of our families and who their cousins were etc. Large families take a lot of data input and because of various computer changes when I was working etc I'd lost the original software and the data files I had were not compatible with other software so I no longer had the details in electronic form, but thankfully I had printed it all out and over recent years had just added more info by scribbling on the paper. As no-one else seems particularly interested in any of it I've now decided that what's there will do and scribbled updates are good enough!

Now actually that I have relieved myself of these expectations I feel a bit more free to choose what I want to spend my time on. I'll probably get to the end of the day and realise I've achieved nothing but I won't feel guilty and at least I'll know I haven't wasted time avoiding stuff either.
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