Blursday

 I read the term “Blursday” in The NY Times, I think. I don’t remember the whole article, but the term struck me as just exactly right. This is the time period in which I am living. There is little to distinguish the days, except if I zoom in and grab it, write it down for posterity.

I try various things to track my days, to try to pin down where my time goes. This is so hard: I can’t really remember. I went grocery shopping, was that Thursday or Friday? When did I last go through my mail and pay all the bills? Don’t I have some deadline coming up on one of the few things I am actually responsible for? When last did I speak to someone? To my family?

It’s so easy to just drift. I am doing things, sure enough. I’m working in the garden, I’m walking, reading books, laundry piles up and then gets done. I’m pretty much on an island most days, but things are getting done.

I’m keeping a log of when I do what in the garden, when I remember to do it. I started this after I planted some grass seeds, and then after a period of time, they came up. How long was that after planting? Because I was planting more seeds, I really wanted to know how long to wait before declaring failure. (Because my mind always assumes a catastrophic failure, but that’s a discussion for another time.) I had to go back and look at my pictures, and read the date taken, to be able to figure that out. Hooray for taking the pictures at the right time!

I’ve taken to actually keeping a calendar to see where my time goes. There is little on the calendar to begin with, but I go back, not every day, but every couple-few days, and try to reconstruct what I did. I don’t have goals here, just curiosity. But I do want to minimize the aimless puttering, the aimless TV (as opposed to purposeful TV!), and the aimless iPad surfing. It bothers me when I have hours accounted for. I want my time to count for something, even if it’s just growing my mind. 

So I look for clues, in the electronic signatures I leave around various places. My fitbit tells me when I woke up and went to bed, and by the number of steps I can often figure out when I did various physical tasks. My phone knows where I am in space, sort of (it’s buggy) and so I can use that to verify what day I went to the Giant supermarket. The iPad tracks screen time, even down to which app I am using, so I fill in details with that. Reading books or watching TV have no electronic signature, except when I finish a book (if it’s on the kindle and I have it connected), or what I can deduce from lack of activity tracked by the fitbit.

Why does this matter? No idea. But I’m doing it, at least for now.