Depending on your point of view, a commodity, a luxury or an barrier.

I have trouble thinking back to a date where I had too much time. I guess in my early teens. I started working at 15 and after 2 years of that ended up working 40+ hours a week ever since.

I’ve never been strong on vacation as the money earned had more value. I wasn’t eating dirt growing up but we we lower middle class. I learned to make do with only little things. I remember a time where I was putting money aside for a big expense. I ended up eating tomato soup with rice and bits of chicken for a month to meet the goal. What time I had was spent being frugal and looking for better opportunities.

Today I am rather well off on the finance department. I don’t live like that’s the truth mind you, still quite frugal and rarely buy anything outside of basic need. 2 boardgames and a NAS are about it for the year. 

What I gave up for that is time. It’s almost a luxury now. I count things in time instead of money. I would honestly rather have more time than money. I could spend more time with my kids, with my wife and just on myself.

I’m sure I’m not alone here. Many people feel overworked or stressed, like the clock is always running fast. Pretty similar feeling. If you’ve ever worked a crunch deadline, then you’re familiar with the feeling of just living on the edge of zombie/robot/human. You also know it isn’t sustainable and the long term effects are never positive. Once the crunch ends, the system shuts down for a while.

So I’m there now. Super crunch, little time for anything other than work, finding happiness in the smallest of things with the family (which while great is sad) and a light at the end, knowing what’s waiting. You almost don’t want to reach that point because it’s worse than the crunch but you need to get through it to get back to sanity.

I do love games and their ability to make me think of something else than the above. That small refuge is getting tinier every day and that stinks.

A few more weeks and it’ll pass. Back to some sense of normal.