And It Never Stops Growing

Last night as I was putting away some of the cluttered junk that I had sitting around my room, I found myself adding another book to my "to read" shelf and two movies to my "to watch" rack. As I looked at both of them, I got to wondering when I'm actually going to get to all of them.

In college I had no trouble finding enough time to read and watch items that interested me. Class was 2 to 4 hours a day. My on campus job was 2 or 3 hours a day. Sports took up about an hour or two. Homework was another few hours. That equaled out to about eight hours total (on a long day). Figure in the fact that I didn't have commutes and regularly could get by on about 5 or 6 hours of sleep, there was a plethora of time in the day to play Xbox, read out in the sun, and have movie marathons.

When I lived in Rochester working for the small software company I was at, I only put in about 7 or 8 total hours of work a day and then hit the gym before going home. I could still get by on about 6 or so hours of sleep. So I only lost an hour or two a day in comparison to college. I still had tons of extra time, especially considering how ungodly boring Rochester was.

Now, living in St. Louis Park, which is a few miles southwest of downtown Minneapolis, I find myself with less time than ever for books and movies. There are a lot of reasons for this, not all of them bad, but it has led to an accumulation of things I "need" to get to, but don't have the time to.

As it is, I'm at a more demanding job that takes 40 hours a week, at the least, out of my life. Then I have my bus rides to and from work. Then there's the gym, which is more packed than the one I was at in Rochester. And now, I seem to be getting into old geezer territory as I need 7 hours... or sometimes even 8, a night to feel like I can get through the day fully rested.

Also, throw in the fact that I go to activities in Minneapolis when I can, such as concerts, plays, T-Wolves games, Twins games, happy hours, and whatever else comes around, some nights I don't have any "spare" time. I'm not complaining about getting to do all kinds of fun stuff as it keeps boredom from creeping up on me, but my bookshelves and DVD racks are crying out in neglect.

Which brings me to an interesting crossroads. I'm making the decision today to limit the amount of things, hopefully severely enough, that I put on my shelves until I do some hard core catching up. I am also making the decision to attempt to do more reading than I have been in the past. I miss it. I know this is getting close to the end of the year and this sounds suspiciously like a new year's resolution, but I hope it's not because we all know how well people actually stick to new year's resolutions. I'm going to try. We'll see how it goes.