Moderate Living

Today’s post is brought about by the daily writing WordPress prompt:

“What luxury can’t you live without?”

Time, for me, is the ultimate luxury. But not in terms of being productive or anything. While I do put pressure on myself to be productive and not to waste the day, I also want to make sure that I’m not wasting my time with activities deemed productive but have no bearing on the overall picture of my life.

If anything, I work as hard as I do to get back time. The rewards of my work enable me to do things that would normally take precious time away from the things that matter to me. Instead of going to the grocery store like I used to, I now have my groceries delivered. Instead of going to the supply store, or the retail electronics store, or a clothing department store I will use my Amazon Prime membership to have those items shipped to me. And wherever I can hire general labor to do things around my house that would otherwise take time to do, I will do it and I will pay generously.

I believe that we only have, in reality, a third of the time we think we have so that makes me accelerate non-important activities through some type of outsourcing.

Because of the time I have to spend shopping for food or clothes, I want to spend it with the family I love – even if it’s just sitting around their house when I visit or vice-versa. The hour (or more realistically, hours) I would spend doing landscape cleaning around my house, I could spend that time reading something very informative. And the benefits list goes on.

I came up with an arbitrary dollar value for 1 hour of my life – not for anything obscene mind you lol. Rather, this is a dollar value that I use to compare the activity in question to doing something that I enjoy. I can’t remember the exact value of it but I know an hour of my time is worth anywhere from $180 – $220. So I always have this thought that if I engage in anything that will keep me busy, its intrinsic benefit to me has to be worth more than at least $180.

And if I just go ahead and do nothing for 2 hours, then I’ll know that it was $360 – $440 well spent rejuvenating myself.

Time – especially being able to slow it down or stop it for hours at a time – to enjoy with your loved ones or to pursue a creative passion is a luxury that I simply cannot live without.