Time We Ain't Even Used Yet

I always believe I'm going to have more time in the summertime than I actually do.

I think this is a holdover from my childhood, which featured great gooey gobs of unstructured time throughout the year but especially between school years. It was one of the redeeming features of the summer - otherwise a hot, humid time largely unsuited to reading indoors.

This is the one thing that I have noticed most about growing older - more than the aches and pains that assail me without noticeable cause, more than the skills and experiences that I've accumulated, often accompanied by said aches and pains, more than the moving around the country the way I have, living in several different cities and states, none of which know how to prepare a decent cheesesteak (apparently this is a skill that peters out about 60 miles from the Liberty Bell).

No, what I notice is the lack of free time. There used to be more of it. Now there is none. I don't know many people who have it anymore. It can't have just disappeared. There must be a pile of it somewhere, all that unused time, gathering dust in a warehouse like the one in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Of course it isn't unused. It's worked to death, actually.

The girls just ended their school years yesterday, and for the next few days they don't actually have a whole lot on their plates - just softball games and the occasional trip up to Dad's old museum while he gives tours. But then it all kicks in - summer school (they have fun classes in the summer now, not like the remedial things you had to take if you failed something back when I was their age), swimming lessons, more softball, on and on, all of which need to be prepared, chauffeured, and otherwise addressed. Throw in the class I'm teaching down at Home Campus this summer - the fourth different format I've taught this class in, so there will be constant rejiggering - and all the administrative work that is Kim's lot these days, and the summer looks pretty packed. And that's even before we try to schedule in some traveling. We're going to schedule in some traveling. Already have, in fact. And it will be fun - we'll see family and maybe even friends along the way, enjoy ourselves in places both familiar and new - but it will be busy.

The great gooey gobs of unstructured time have dried up and blown away, leaving nothing but schedules behind.

No matter how much I enjoy the things we schedule - and generally I do - this still strikes me as something of a loss all around.