Alone time

This week’s Food for thought Friday is about making time for yourself. I am fortunate that I am able to grab some alone time most weeks. It helps that the person I live with absolutely needs time to himself, just as I do.

How often do you make time for yourself?

This depends on what we have going on in a given week. Now I am not working I am able to spend more time doing all the things I love. But there is always a danger that you try to cram too much in. This must be why retired people exclaim that they don’t know how they found time to go to work.

Master and I do most things together. We shop, cook and watch films, go out to concerts and to the cinema. We travel to lovely places, wander through and around churches and galleries. One of the reasons I stopped working as soon as I could was so that I wasn’t constantly running out of annual leave or using up entire precious weekends.

So when we have a quieter week we both take advantage. Master tends to go into his study and until now I would be on the sofa with my lap top, or else reading. But I’ve decided to return to some form of work as well as to step up my blogging pursuits. So last week we went to Ikea and bought a desk and chair for me. We have installed this in a spare bedroom. Next we plan to put in some serious shelving so that my books, which are currently residing in the garage can come into the house.

What do you do to gain the most benefit from your “you time”?

For me (and also for him I think), it is about head space. When you are constantly in the company of others there is no time to just get into your own head. To think. We both also like silence sometimes and when we listen to music we have different tastes. So spending time apart is good.

Sometimes I will go for a walk during ‘my time’. This allows me to get some fresh air and exercise while also taking time to think and reflect.

The time we spend apart enables us to have stuff to talk about when we are together. It also means that we are both mentally refreshed for whatever activity we are planning.

How do you balance the time you devote to yourself and to others? Which do you prioritise? Why?

There was a time when everyone else in my life came first. My husband and son, work, parents. Gradually over the past few years this has changed. Leaving my house in the hands of my ex and his new partner signified a change for me. Then leaving work and of course having surgery last autumn forced changes upon me. I had no choice but to prioritise me and us.

My mum now lives 2 hours away. This means visits are planned and I tend to stay over night with her and travel back the next day. My son was married at Christmas and he and his wife live in the town I moved from. This is about 40 minutes away, so again our time together is more planned than it used to be.

There is a calmness to my life that wasn’t there before. At last there is balance. But I think I deserve the life, and the alone time I get to have for now.