"Spending Time" Book Signing Coming Up

Spending time:

What do you do with your time?  Have you ever thought about how you spend your time?  Most of us have to work to survive, although there are a growing number of people who make a career out of not working.   Just have a look at this!  If this doesn’t make you wonder what is happening nothing will.

(http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/Aug/14/la-jolla-beach-bum-food-stamps-fox-news/)

Anyone who works for a living knows that time has a dollar value.  The kind of work you do determines the amount that someone will pay for your time.  That is just the way it is.  If you fly airplanes for a living you make more than if you wash dishes.  It makes perfect sense that some skills are worth more than others.

Here is where it gets a bit confusing.  The value of your time is not the same as what someone will pay you for your time.  In the long run you and only you will determine the value of your time.  How much your time is worth is determined by a whole bunch of other factors.

When you play a video game like one of the Call of Duty games the time you spend playing the game is logged.  You can go back and see just how much time you have spent playing the game.  I have often thought about how much time I spend playing those games.  I play six different characters.  For just Call of Duty Black Ops Two I have logged over 566 hours.  That represents over three and a half months of work at a full time job.  That is in a word, crazy!  I think that I may need to attend video games anonymous if there is such a thing.

Now that we know that I am not always wise with how I spend my time, how about you?  Do you spend your time in useful pursuits or do you do what I have done with my allotted time?

I was relating the game thing to a young man at church and instead of commenting on my wasting my time he asked a question, “Did you have fun?”  That got me thinking because even though I answered yes there was something in me that was saying no at the same time.

Many years ago I gave a talk at my church in which I spoke about how I had come to view money.  Basically I said that to me money no longer was measured in dollars and cents, but rather in the hours of my life.  If I were to purchase something I would look at it as giving up hours of my life for the item.  When you look at money in that respect the things that you spend it on take on a completely different look.

The time that we have to spend here on this earth has a number.  Very few of us know what that number is.  It’s like a bank account, only we have no idea exactly how much or how little we have in it.  Each day we make our withdrawal and each day we make our purchases.  Most of the time we don’t even think about the account we are drawing from until we get old enough to figure that there isn’t a whole lot left.

The question for all of us is not simply what have we purchased with the minutes of our lives but when it is all said and done what has been the value of those minutes.   

I have a friend that keeps a book in which he writes down every cent he spends and what he spent it on.  He does this so that he can look in that book and tell if he has been wasting money.  It also helps him figure out how to save money.

Imagine if you did the same sort of thing with how you spent your time.  Imagine if you kept a journal of everything that you did for one week.  A record of how much time you spent on each endeavor right there for you to review.  You might be surprised at what you would see.

When it comes right down to it how we spend our time is an indicator of what we think is valuable.  What do you think is valuable?  What in your life do you think is worth spending the minutes and hours of your life doing?

It seems to be a human condition that those things that are the most valuable to us are not compensated for in cash.  When you stop on the side of the road to help a stranded motorist or take care of an elderly parent your time is worth more than can be calculated in dollars and cents.

I spent some time a few days ago watching two of my grandsons.  Now that was time well spent.  It was worth more to me than any of the roofs I did or the instruments I calibrated.

As I look around I wonder just what is happening to us as a people.  We seem to be losing focus on what is really important and what is really of value.  Consider this, when I was a kid the most important thing to my mom and dad was our family.  Where is that thought today?  Check out just a few statistics, 48% of births are to unwed mothers, forty to fifty percent of first time marriages end in divorce.  Exactly where are we headed?  Exactly what do we now think is of value?  We use to have family values.  Where have they gone.

You can’t make anyone else spend their time wisely or make right choices.  You can only spend your own time wisely and make your own choices the right ones.  Perhaps the next time you are about to do something that you think up front is a waste of time or the wrong thing to do you will reconsider what it is you are doing.

Just one other thought before I go.  In 1995 there was a local Playwright’s festival at the Eugene O’Neill theater center.  One of the plays performed there was one that I had written titled “A Rare Encounter”.  It was a story about a man who had lost sight of the value of his own life to the point of wanting to end it.  That is until he meets Charlie an old bum that knew a lot about wrong choices.

On this Saturday the 8th I will be at Bank Square Books in Mystic for a book signing of “Spit Shine” my short novel based on the play “A Rare Encounter”, from eleven AM until one PM.  I would be honored if you would join me there.

One last note: The screen play for Spit Shine is now being written.  Who knows where that might take the story!!

Bank Square Books, 53 West Main Street, Mystic, Connecticut (860) 536-3795

MY NEW SHORT NOVEL: "Spit Shine" 

My Website: http://tagewright.blogspot.com/
Download my novels "Operation Armageddon"
and "Project Vengeance" in Kindle Format on Amazon

tagewright@aol.com
(860) 608-8451