Time is free, but it's priceless.

“Time is free, but it's priceless. You can't own it, but you can use it. You can't keep it, but you can spend it. Once you've lost it you can never get it back.” ― Harvey MacKay

I became accustomed to treating the hours in my days like spare change in my jeans pockets… a somewhat “easy come, easy go” type of approach if you will. Eventually (life happened) and that changed. Staring at the orbit of a teabag in my morning cup of ceylon while my phone pinged with notifications, it suddenly dawned on me, I am not running out of tasks or “to do’s” - that list just never seems to dwindle… but I am running out of minutes that actually feel like mine.

The quote I shared at the beginning of this post from Harvey MacKay pretty much puts it in a nutshell and lately the looping of those words in my mind has become less of a quote I am reciting and more of an internal compass I am beginning to follow. The older I get, the clearer it is… time doesn’t need a lock to be stolen. It just needs me to look away for a millisecond.

Safe to say that I think there are seasons we pass through in all our lives when every message feels urgent, every invite feels compulsory, and every disagreement was an arena just waiting to be filled with a gawking audience. We step into comment threads like gladiators, we let other people’s panic and mayhem colonise our diaries as well as our internal dialogue and we donate Saturdays to obligations that leave us feeling hollow.

These days, I have begun to ask myself questions before saying yes or doing anything… Does this “cost” more than it gives? If the answer is yes, then I pay with a shrug and walk away. I used to think “no” was a door slamming, when in actual fact, it is just a gate to a much more peaceful garden.

I guard my free time now, because it’s scarce. I combine things on purpose. Chop onions whilst listening to a friends voice note. Stretch calves while the kettle boils (okay that one is totally a lie, haha!) Turn the queue at the shops into people watching theatre - that is practically involuntary for me, if I am honest… but if I “must” be somewhere anyway, I try to lace it with something that feeds me. It’s not efficiency for efficiency’s sake,it is more like “life quality control”, lol.

I have also stopped acting as if my attention is “free” confetti. There is a cost to every click and every conversation. Some people add spark and energy to my days and others arrive with little grey rainclouds over their heads and then expect me to stand under it, alongside them. Do not get me wrong… I don’t hate the cloud carriers, I just refuse to be their umbrella anymore.

If something will drain me later, it costs extra now. That “extra” is a pause. A breath. A “do I actually want this?” If the answer is lukewarm, it’s a no. Lukewarm is just cold waiting to happen - true story!!! Mark my words!

I now keep little “jars in my head”... Must. Matters. Might. “Must” keeps the lights on and the body fed. “Matters” includes relationships, creative work, and the walks that marry my thoughts back together. “Might” is everything else. Guess which jar used to overflow? Guess which jar now gets the leftovers, lol!

Empty minutes are not waste, they are the oxygen we ACTUALLY need! Notifications are polite thieves. Most things can wait an hour. If it’s truly urgent, they can phone again. Gatekeeping my focus is not rude, it is realistic responsibility.

The most incredible shift through all of these little “tweaks” is how light life feels when you stop feeding the wrong fires. More laughter, more room for people who show up with curiosity instead of drama.

None of this means my agenda (or life) looks like a spa brochure. I still juggle every second of every day and I still drop balls. Some days, even my best self forgets to set an alarm for something important. But I am learning to spend time like it is invaluable, which it is!!! Every choice says, “more of this, please.” or “less of that”. When I spend it on things that align with my values, my time starts sounding like me again.

If there is one thing I know now, it is that time does not hand out refunds. We don’t get shop credit on wasted hours. What we do get, though, is a choice… every single day, about where our attention lands and who or what we spend it on. And that choice shapes the ENTIRE texture of our lives!! The minutes we guard, the “no’s” we aren’t scared to say, the moments we choose to actually live in instead of scroll past… that is the sh!te that builds a life which feels like it belongs to us. Not borrowed. Not drained. Ours. Yours. Mine!