Bucket | Photo by greenkozi
I’m trying to wrap my head around reorganizing my life.
Every day is filled with events. Some consistent, daily events are eating, sleeping, thinking, and checking the internet.
Other events happen less often, like grocery shopping, shaving, picking up a newspaper.
Going further down the “frequency” scale are changing my car’s oil, seeing a movie in the theater, or writing a letter.
What about the rare, one-off events? There is a good chance they are adverse, like getting food poisoning or spraining an ankle. They could also be thrilling, like a trip to paradise or completing a physical feat. Something that brings you pure joy, perhaps? Because we know how rare that feeling is.
Why are those wonderful events rare though? Do they need to be?
I have been thinking about the most important and valuable resource a person has — and an equal supply of as every other person who walks and walked the Earth, at that. I’m talking about time.
I have 24 hours in a day and you have 24 hours in a day. Bob Marley had 24 hours in a day. Charles Bukowski had 24 hours in a day. I think my neighbor has 24 hours in a day too. I should ask her to make sure.
Since the 24 hours seems to be standard, I’m inclined to imagine a symbol to represent those hours. How about a bucket? Because I just found the perfect picture of a dog in a fireman’s hat next to a bucket.
So we all have the same amount of time in a day. That means my bucket is equal in volume to everyone else’s bucket. Even Gandhi’s and MLK Jr.’s buckets.
Whoa!
What goes into my bucket? Well, just like Marley, Bukowski, my neighbor, Gandhi, and MLK Jr.’s, I fill my bucket with those events of each day I was thinking about earlier.
How can I represent those events? I think those rare, exquisite events can be campfire s’mores. Because campfire s’mores are oh, so good! The rare, crappy events can be spiders. And those unproductive things I do every day that I do without much thinking? I would say they are little grains of sand and dirt.
A few minutes on Twitter — plip plip plip goes the sand into the bucket. A few hours on reddit — plop slop goes the wet ball of mud.
Don’t get me wrong, I think a little sand in your bucket is alright. And a lot of sand is acceptable too, if you’re teaching a kiddo how to build the ultimate sand castle.
But I have been trying recently to keep from loading my bucket up with sand. Why would anyone carry a bucket of sand around?! Beats me, and I’ve been doing it my whole life! I need to keep out the sand and dedicate room for campfire s’mores. Because you and I both know that sand and campfire s’mores don’t mix.
Thankfully, every night I go to bed and when I wake up, my bucket is spotless.
Now if I could construct the perfect lid.
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Further inspiration: Simplify the Internet, I Quit Twitter for a Month…, Impending Doom Machine
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This post was written by Mitch in Jamestown, ND, USA on Friday, January 18, 2013
Following your metaphor… I am pondering the question of whether it is so easy to fill the bucket with sand and mud in part because it is at least pleasing to have a FULL bucket… Whereas, maybe we would only have time in our 24 hours to roast up one or two s’mores, leaving room at the top of the bucket, and thus making us feel a little anxiety about the bucket’s fill-line being too low?? I dunno… Just a thought… Because I also have a difficult time being satisfied with my bucket’s contents… But I also get anxious about “wasting time” on activities that don’t have enough “volume.” Maybe your metaphor should make s’mores that are bucket-sized and -shaped so I could see the sense in working all day on that perfectly browned marshmallow…
I have the problem of having my bucket filled with sand and mud every single day! My ideal is a bucket filled with only the essential contents of a day well spent. That is, the quality of the events matter, not the quantity. No matter how you spend your day, something is going into the bucket. The challenge for me is consciously filtering out the extraneous, unnecessary, and unfulfilling.
So yes, true to my American roots, spending an entire day making bucket-sized and -shaped s’more would make sense to me — it would be the day I achieved perfection.