Recently, my life has been defined by a lack of free time and needing every minute of every day to be used as efficiently as possible and optimized.
The past three years, I have worked during the day as a special education teacher and gone to law school at night. It has required being busy from 7 a.m. to 9:30 or 10 p.m. some days, and on some semesters, I had this schedule Monday to Thursday.
I just finished law school yesterday. It’s about to be summer, so the school year will end, and I am moving on to be a lawyer next year. Suddenly, as of mid-June, I won’t have either obligation anymore. I can literally sit at home all day long until I start my new job.
Since I am about to graduate law school, I have to study for the bar exam, too, this summer. This is a stressor in itself and not something I want to leave to chance. But I know myself and will exhaustively listen to lectures in my free time and leave no stone unturned. I will complete as many multiple-choice and essay questions as I can, make a routine, and do everything in my power to pass.
I have done a preliminary, cursory studying where I listen to some bar exam lectures and then answer multiple choice questions or practice essays. Fortunately, the videos have been more review than they have felt like new material. I hope they continue to feel more like review than they do completely new material. I know how intense it will be, but for me, someone who worked and went to law school for three straight years, it will be significantly more chill.
Even without law school, my first thought was, “wow, I suddenly have way too much free time.”
In my free time, as an adult, I have always pursued self-improvement. In these periods, I try to give some grace and some push, but it’s usually more push. I often have to recalibrate this balance often when I feel like I’m either (a) not getting enough out of myself or (b) running myself into the ground. I have tried to self-improve traditionally in the things I was conditioned to care about growing up: work and school, which has worked out.
I’ve often found that having a lot much free time can sometimes not be a good thing. It leads to a lot more thinking, self-reflection, and having to take stock of overall satisfaction in life and meaning rather than just staying busy all the time. Of course, I like to turn a lot of my energies into hustling and trying to find ways to feel productive. Even in areas of self-discovery or personally significant parts of life, like tackling relationships or trying to process personal trauma in therapy, I always need to feel like I’m moving forward and not backsliding and regressing.
I am very bad at actually treating breaks like breaks. I get restless and always need to feel like I’m moving forward. I don’t think there’s anything quite wrong with making every second and moment an opportunity for personal growth, but it is true that I have a very hard time “just chilling” like a lot of people can.
When I was younger, any time I had a ton of free time, I would play video games. I had a huge video game addiction in late elementary school and early middle school, so this would get out of control very quickly, with me spending more than eight hours on the computer a day. Now, as an adult with very real responsibilities all the time, I can regulate this a lot better, but I still do occasionally get carried away once I get sucked into playing games.
I used to love the days that were spent away, just playing online and console video games for 8–12 hours a day. But it was looking back the next day or week after when I would feel like shit about myself for not only not being productive, but not really living, spending all of my time in a virtual world where I could escape reality.
So this time, I want to use my phase of “way too much free time” a bit more intentionally, and if I’m going to try to self-improve, I will self-improve in other areas of my life that are just as important, that I haven’t necessarily had the chance to attend to the past few years.
Running 80 miles a week
I am running 80 miles a week. I plan to keep running 80 miles a week. I have been doing it for the last four weeks to try to run a big personal record once I run a marathon in the fall.
I have written a lot about running, but the short part of it is that I’ve been doing it for a really long time and am training for marathons. I have plateaued and stagnated and just been in an overall frustrating place with running for a couple years, not running personal bests and being unhappy any time I didn’t run a personal best.
But recently, I have found the formula to success as a long-distance runner (for me) is to run a lot of miles over a long period of time. I have run 70 miles a week for a given cycle, but running 80 miles a week without getting injured is the next part.
Also, I am trying not to focus so much on time and start focusing more on being happy with the effort I give, having fun running with my friends, and just trying to clear my mind when I have a lot going on with my running. I am still chasing a time and a personal best eventually, but with the heat and humidity of the summer, especially where I live in the mid-Atlantic, fast times likely won’t come as easily as I want anyway, so it’s important to recalibrate goals and priorities again.
Spending more time with my wife and friends
Because of my schedule the past few years, my wife and I haven’t been able to spend as much time together as we would like, which is especially problematic for newlyweds since we have only been married for two years now.
But we are resolving to spend more time together now that so much of my schedule has opened up and will open up for the foreseeable future. For example, we are starting a beginner swing class for two together. We are also resolving to go on more dates, but it’s not just adventures and excursions. We plan to spend more time together around the house, as well, watching TV and cooking together. My wife is trying to start a garden of plants and vegetables she is trying to grow, and I am trying to contribute any way I can.
I am also trying to help out more around the house, which leads to my next point.
Improving my house skills
A common conflict in our marriage is that I don’t contribute as much as I should with cleaning or maintaining the house. It’s not like we have guests all the time, but I have been trying, and still am not great at cleaning. My dishwashing is not great, and my wife often has to do the dishes over when some pots and pans are not clean.
My wife and I grew up with different standards around cleaning, which we have worked to reconcile. I sweep, clean bathrooms, and fold clothes, although I tend to do these things a bit differently from my wife. I am trying to learn better and be more thorough when it comes to cleaning, cooking, and maintaining the house.
Because we moved to a suburban house with a lawn two years ago, I now have to mow the lawn. This is another task I just do begrudgingly. I used to pay someone $50 to mow the lawn every two weeks, but the cost was adding up, so I got a cheap, battery-powered lawnmower myself. The issue is the battery and backup battery to that lawnmower last 40 minutes maximum, so I have to mow the lawn in short increments, often over the course of several days or even a week.
It’s not like these tasks are particularly core or central to my identity, but I am trying to do better in all of them because they will never go away, and the more I cook, clean, and mow the lawn, the more efficient I can be in the future and the better of a partner I can be for house-related work, and when my wife and I have kids.
Reading for fun
I have been able to write, but I have barely had time to read for fun. I tried to make an effort each day to read for fun before going to bed for the past three years, but it is really only a few pages at a time. I haven’t had the opportunity to go beyond a couple of pages a day. Of course, anyone can tell you reading a couple of pages isn’t necessarily time to really get immersed, and sometimes, the goal of reading late at night is not to have fun, but to get me tired enough to get to sleep. This leads to me maybe completing one book for fun a month.
I do read news articles for fun and opinion pieces I find interesting. But I have struggled a bit to read full books for fun since college, when I’ve had more time. My focus and motivation aren’t there, and if I have time to run and write, I should have time to read for fun too. I will read for 20 to 25 minute increments to start and let myself continue if I get sucked into the book, and I will readwhole novel series again like I haven’t done in recent years. I first read for fun when I read the Percy Jackson series, and want to rekindle a lot of that fun because so much of what I read is because I have to read it.
Chasing happiness and meaning
I recently read Kwame Anthony Appiah’s New York Times piece, Our Idea of Happiness Has Gotten Shallow. Here’s How to Deepen It, where Appiah, an ethicist and philosopher, says that happiness is less about what we have, but more about what we give and what we’re a part of. He advocates a form of happiness found not only in cheap, shallow pursuits like money and status.
Thus, happiness is not just intertwined with individual pleasure, but means finding a meaningful role within a community.
Sometimes, I struggle to find this deeper and more communal form of happiness. But I find this happiness at work in the small moments, like when a parent thanks me for everything I did to help their child graduate, or when I can finally see a student who struggled for years to come to school and succeed get the outcomes they tried so hard for. On the side, as when I edit others’ work, I find that meaning when I help writers improve and get the outcomes they want.
Success for myself is great. I spend most of my time chasing those outcomes I want for myself, but it’s a very different and more fulfilling happiness when it’s not just me, but other people I care about. One area I want to chase that happiness in my free time is my wife’s career — she is trying to find a new job, and I am trying to support her not just in logistical areas, but also emotionally in her endeavor.
But there are other ways to find this meaning. This season of more free time is an opportunity to also try to re-engage my faith a bit and find a church community. I have also tried to actively avoid it for a couple of years, but spending more time with my parents and brother might also be a way to make those relationships better as well, and for me to be more involved in my family instead of being so focused on my own endeavors.
I know who I am, and I am someone who will always chase self-improvement, who will always chase meaning, who does not feel fulfilled without always feeling like I’m moving forward. I know who I am and will not change that. But maybe I can relax a bit and just chase meaning and self-improvement at a slower pace, in a different way.
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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.
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