Do you wonder where the time goes?

                  I do, obsessively. The less remaining, the more I stew. Relax, I enjoin myself (a ludicrous command).

                  I half-envy folks who can “call it a day.” Oh, for time that’s “free”! My time groans in bondage. I am always “borrowing” from my dwindling store, a loan never to be repaid. I loathe tiresome time-sucks, bless concision, curse garrulity. Slow clerks in stores make me froth (though I keep smiling).

                  I make a spreadsheet to understand better. I love spreadsheets. They impose on existence a delusive order. The estimates in the chart below are guesswork, but not far off. Seems, by this calculation, I’m occupied for twenty hours more than a week contains. No wonder my groans. It’s like squeezing a size 42 body into size 38 trousers.

                  Where to trim?

                  Not sleep. Too little sleep makes me grim to myself and others. Under-rested I can’t write. Can’t omit eating or food prep: these are my hours with Jane. If I’ve no time for love, why bother? No skipping exercise, which, my docs insist, will add years to my span. (Besides, Henry wouldn’t hear of it.) Chores and ablutions stay, alas. 

                  Writing is my reason for being – no skimping there if I can help it. Does the world require such volubility? Hardly. My obligation is to myself, to believe I’ve made the most of my chance. Craziness, granted. But this craziness spares me worse and makes me eager for dawn.

                  Dawdling I’d forego – but how? I am not a machine, with an on-off switch. Often I discover myself staring into emptiness or reading a cereal box. Why? What am I up to? I have no idea, no recollection of slipping into this trance. I chide myself to no effect.

                  E-reading I’d like to eliminate entirely. I don’t enjoy it. Almost everything I read makes me roar. I feel like Odysseus in Polyphemus’ cave, due to be eaten by an ogre. While literature transports me into a sweet dream of sense, journalism dunks me in our moment’s stench. I’m incredulous, repulsed, reminded of that cheerful line from King Lear: “The worst is not so long as we can say, ‘This is the worst.’”

                  I assemble a sub-schedule of my e-reading, to see what I might skip. Krugman, no way. Blundell, no (that’s Dean Blundell, who reports the worst news first, with clarity and gusto – check him out). The Times, of course not. The Economist – my check on the Times. Political Wire – up-to-the-minute recap of our national mess. Heather Cox Richardson, no, though I skip class when the history she’s discussing isn’t current. Family and friends – these I enjoy. Raw Story – shameless partisan gossip. Robert Reich – views from the lucid left. Phillips O’Brien – my invaluable guide to the world’s wars, bristling with information legacy media can’t or won’t report (for example, Ukraine’s been winning its war for a while and America’s vaunted military is way sicker than you suspect).

                  No cuts there. I’d double my dire dosage if I could stand it, but I can’t. No more can we clap our ears from the oncologist’s report. I must know how bad things are so I can react, reflect, ready myself.

                  My spreadsheet affords me scant balm. I am overbooked because… I’m overbooked. Blame the Nameless One. He is our cancer. He imperils my survival. No more could Odysseus rest easy in his cave, lest he become a snack.

                  The good news about this bad news is it keeps me on my toes. I must press to be, know, write better while there’s still time.