You go through life always wanting to do and be so much more then the amount of time the day to day grind zaps away from you, wondering to yourself “what if I did this?”, “what if I did that?”. I’m no 18 year old with a whole life time ahead of me anymore, so lately I’ve been trying to work through some of those things, be realistic and toss aside things which are just never going to happen, and explore some of those maybes.
One thing which has been on my heart for a couple of years is undertaking some formal study of the Bible to help me grow as a Christian. I’ve toyed with this idea for a while, and often push it back thinking “I don’t have time” or “maybe later”, but realised unless I give it a go and see if I can work this into my life, I can’t really say for sure I can’t find the time for this (after all time is all relative and about priorities right?).
So this year I’ve taken some steps and enrolled in bible college as a part-time student to really give it a go and answer those “maybe” questions in a very real sense. It will be a challenge for a number of reasons: I need to get better with my time management and productivity; balance family, a full-time job, church and personal commitments; the study techniques and assessment methods are very different to my current experience; and I will need to stay awake during evening classes. 🙂
My plan is this should not impact my work, and I’ll just need to be more specific with how I plan my “free” time to plan for study time and down time, and get better at avoiding the kind of black hole time (like where you manage to sit in front of the TV and zone out for 5 hours).
Maybe I’ll do this and I’ll find a good life/work/study balance and be able to continue, or maybe I’ll fail miserably in my first semester and have to drop out due to no having no time or impacts on my work or personal life. Either way, at least I can say I gave it a good go to answer the question “is it possible?” in a very real and practical sense.
Have you ever made changes in your life where you’ve had to seriously re-think your time management and balance? If so let us know how you’ve approached this by leaving a comment.
Image “One Day” by mattgrover on flickr used under Creative Commons license.
