Your Me Time should be sacred. Nurtured. Required. Penned in on your calendar. But it’s not always respected as such, for a few reasons:
The first is that many of us are master excuse-makers. King-sized. I know those lines, the old bag of tricks. I’ve crafted them, used them.
“I ran out of time.”
“I have too much to do.”
“I feel guilty.”
“I’m fine, really!”
But here’s the thing, my fellow spouses. You need to choose to make the time for you. I know you know it; you know I know you know it. Your overall health (physical, mental, emotional, even spiritual) is dependent upon your ability to set aside moments for yourself. Me Time is for the perpetuation of a healthy lifestyle and not to be used only when life is too difficult to handle.
Secondly, it’s a lot easier to make time for myself when things are convenient. When my husband isn’t deployed. When I don’t have to pay for babysitting. It’s a lot easier when spouses are helpful and offer a night off, or when work and board meetings never interfere, or when random neighborhood babysitters knock at your door, hand you $200, and insist that you must leave with your children in their tender care (that has yet to happen to me).
But the stars won’t always align into a perfect “Me Time”-shaped constellation. Finding the time to fill your well, to nourish your weary soul isn’t convenient. Often, remnants of used hours are thrown away, labeled as “not-enough-time” to sit down and commune with oneself. However, that’s where you have to make your everyday Me Time. Finished with a deadline? Take ten minutes outside and stretch. Kids down for an hour of Netflix a nap? Take one of your own! Or begin reading a book. Journal. Draw with sidewalk chalk. Moments of Me Time are valuable. Precious. Grains of sand falling through an eternal hourglass. Take them. Use them.
And yes, I know how heartbreaking it is when planned Me Time does not work out. Just in time to sit down for a White Collar marathon on Netflix only to be interrupted by a forgotten assignment, an emergent text message, a vomiting child, all of the fire alarms blaring (I was so mad about that one).
Try again. Hike into the mountains and breathe in the scents of wildflowers and pine trees. Lock, latch, and booby trap the bathroom door and take a warm bath while the prunes appear on fingers and toes. Run for one, two, ten, twenty miles and feel the setting sun’s warmth on the back of your neck. Discuss the best of classic literature (or the very best tabloid) with friends. Play Bunco. Get pedicures. I peruse vintage baking cookbooks. I’ve even taken to staring at the floor on occasion. Your moments are too important to ignore. Your time is too valuable.
Value the moments of the plain, old ordinary days, the days full of creativity and make-believe and too much sugar and complete, utter exhaustion. Find Me moments on the hot mat of the trampoline, in earthy garden beds, in the car on the way home from work. Try new foods, shop Target’s clearance section, dance in a little black dress to the best of Black Eyed Peas. Bury yourself in the sand. Meditate. Give yourself a time out.
What’s your Me Time?
For in those ordinary moments of Me Time, you will find the absolute extraordinary.
