How do you spend your time?

Time. The age old vestige. Can’t really escape it. Constantly stresses us out and at some deeper level I think terrifies us all. But without getting all existential and philosophical, I would like to pose a question: What does a 23-year old do with his time? This is the question, as a 23-year old, I have been asking myself. Friends have been discussing how much they miss college and how “real life” isn’t as good as college life. Many people say their college days were their best days. Personally, I always found that to be sad. Did I make the best friends I have now in college? Absolutely! But do our friendships exist only within the framework of college? Absolutely not! We’re all going through the same stuff now that we are graduated. Granted I am not married or having a baby or teaching at some great school. But for the 4% of Hillsdale graduates, there is much to be lived for outside of college and now the question is simply, how do I live it?

So I have a job. This job is great. It pays the bills, enables me to save up a vast majority of my money for graduate school, and at the same time I can still buy great cheese, wine, and other food delicacies that make life fun and demonstrate the incredible diversity of the awesome God that we serve. But there is still more time. The job takes up about 45 hours a week when you factor in the driving time. But if I am being totally honest with myself, I sleep in till about 11 every day. Part of it is recovery from work, but a bigger part of it is simply not having anything else to do.

I remember while I was a student at Hillsdale I would wake up at 7:50AM every day leave the house by 8:45 and not come back until 1:00AM when I would slump into bed and sleep for almost 7 hours and do it all over again. For 17 hours a day I was running my butt off from one thing to the next. It was great! I am very much a workaholic I have noticed. So should I get another part time job? Is that a wise usage of my time? On top of my job I also always feel a need to be learning and therefore I have been reading books like When People Are Big and God Is Small by Ed Welch and A Quest For More by Paul Tripp. These books are part of a series that I purchased from CCEF, which is the Christian Counseling organization I desire to be a part of one day. These authors are the men I hope to study under when I go to Westminster one day soon and therefore I want to make myself as familiar with their works as possible. Since I can’t be in classes, reading their books is the 2^nd best thing.

So do I get another job? Do I focus more on reading and studying? Where does God’s Word fit into all of this? While I was living in France last year I started writing a personal Commentary on the book of Acts. It was extremely encouraging and uplifting and I have been remiss to begin writing them again out of the struggle of being a sinner that exists so strongly in my heart.

Questions of time. How to spend it. And actually having the motivation to do it. Saying to myself, do it yourself and be diligent to stay consistent with it. And of course, all of these ideas assume that there are no other distractions in my life. Like paying bills, or returning overdue movies to RedBox, or shaving on a regular basis. These all take away from the time I have as well. It would be an interesting movie to see how people would act if our time weren’t limited. Make the setting for the movie our same society and culture, but make everyone immortal. I would love to know how many chiropractors and massage therapists there would be. How often people get together for a coffee date. Why rush? There’s all the time in the world to get together and talk. Many more ideas come to mind as well, but I will leave you with those ones.

I have to go get ready for work now because sadly, my time is limited and I only had 20 minutes to write this. Happy Thursday! Ciao!