525,600/year or 10080/week-How do you measure your time?

525,600 minutes.  525,000 moments so dear.  525,600 minutes- how do you measure, measure a year? (From the musical “Rent”, yeah, I’m a musical junkie)

A shout out to my pastor, Pastor Bill, you gave us a little something to think about this week.  There are 10,080 minutes in a week.  How many of those minutes do we use to serve God or just try to do something good.  Now I’m not going to go all preachy on you, not my style.  But it has set the wheels a spinning and those hamsters in my head seem to be training for a marathon. 

If you think about it, if you work 40 hours a week and let’s say you are one of the lucky few that actually gets 8 hours of sleep each night plus getting ready for work and fixing supper each night (guessing and hour for each) , that’s 6,600 minutes just working, sleeping, eating, and getting dressed.  That leaves you with 3,480 minutes of your week open to a variety of things. Now if you are a mom and have kids, that number is pretty much gone before you know it.  Plus if you are trying to get healthy and adding an hour each day to get sweaty, well there goes another 420 minutes, which brings you to 3,060 minutes filled with what is your daily normal life! (By the way, I had to use a calculator; I’m not a math whiz at all)

Isn’t funny, how we think we have all this time, and then when we take just a few moments to catch our breaths and focus on the present we realize that it goes by in a flash.  Now I work out 6/7 days a week for at least 40 to 90 minutes each time come heck or high water.  I think if I skip just one, it’s a slippery slope to skipping another, then another and before I know it, I’m back to where I started.  I know me and I know how my brain and I used to come to terms, it would “suggest” working out and eating well, and my body would agree, but the laziness genie would pop out of her bottle and somehow grant my unspoken wish and before I realized it she had granted me out of my original goal and replaced it with her easy, who cares if you can’t zip your jeans, your sweat pants still fit and you have a man, so why go through all the hassle!  That genie is tricky, because all it used to take was a few “minutes” sitting, thinking I’m going to get up and do that, and before you know it an hour has passed and you no longer have the gumption to do anything. Well that is no longer my m.o. (method of operation)

We are blessed with a new day every day! Now I will admit to you I didn’t wake up this morning singing to the birds or dancing, but I did wake up and started chatting with my kitties as they twirled around my legs acting as if I haven’t feed them in a month.  But if I don’t get up, they come and get me.  The one minute where my son, still half asleep bundled in a blanket, said, “Thanks Mom, love you too much”.  Just the one minute where my hubby decided to make me smile and gave me a kiss and wished me a good day.  Or when a co-worker gave me hug or is always willing to supply me with any goodies I desire in order to make my day a little better.  This is not something that takes a lot of time.  Minutes, sometimes, only seconds to smile or hug someone and to you it’s just a minute, to the person who receives it, it’s so much more.

I think everyone “deserves” to feel like they matter!  I smile to people I don’t know, I wave to people at the stop lights and have even had the impromptu dance off at stop lights, which I have to tell you was a surprise but extremely fun (and if you catch me jamming to my tunes in my car, feel free to wave and honk and even hold up a napkin with the number 10 on it to tell me how awesome my car dancing is).  I talk to people on elevators and smile to those I pass on the sidewalk and on more than one occasion I’ve been known to strike conversations with complete strangers in the grocery line only to leave them with a smile because let’s face it, I’m quite the conversationalist and love to leave on a laughing note.

So even though our days are filled with kids, work, commitments, sports, working out, and life in general, sometimes if we just take a MINUTE out of the 10,080 we get each week and chose to use it on someone else, just because, not expecting anything in return, we gain so much in return.  I know some of you are out there saying, “I don’t have a minute to spare?”  Seriously you don’t have a minute to spare to smile at someone, wish them Good Morning, tell them they look nice, hold open a door, wave, send a text, give a hug, or just say hey?  Well it has taken you more than 2 minutes to read this blog, and I’m willing to have you sacrifice reading the rest of it in order for you to look up from your device of choice, and smile or say Good Day to someone!

As someone who has lost many people close to me from a young age, I know too well that time is short.  And there are only so many minutes in day, a week, and a year.  So I love that you take time out of your busy schedules to read my rantings.  I realize it only takes you a few minutes, but when I see how many have viewed my blog, I’m elated.  When you take your “minute” to tell me in person how much you love to read them, I’m through the stratosphere. So you see just by you reading this, you are giving me a minute of your time and YOU are giving me happiness!  Which makes me want to write more and make you smile, so you can see the amazing circle of goodness that can be created.

So make every minute of your day count!  Time is free, but it’s priceless.  You can’t own it, but you can use it.  You can’t keep it, but you can spend it.  Once you’ve lost it, you can never get it back.

So I wish you a peachy rest of your week.  I hope all your minutes are filled with happiness and hope.

Until next time my friends!!!!