Day 29: The Gift of Time

I missed yesterday's give because Amber had the debit card that we use to access the giving fund, and she went to bed early. She went to bed early again tonight, and once again I'm hesitant to wake her up to get the card, and I don't know where she's left it.

Still, overall, today was successful on the giving front. We packaged up the books which had been requested from a Day 5, and finally got them in the mail. (Sorry for the delay on that.) Amber also set up the food drive boxes that she's getting together for the Student Leadership Academy at Ivy Tech Community College.

I am taking this week off from the day job to focus on this (and other) writing projects, so you'd think I'd be getting a lot done, but not today. At around 1:00 pm, Amber rushed home because our car, which is in need of an oil change, was making curious sounds - so I went to Sears for an oil change, taking How to Change the World along with me for company. The oil change went relatively uneventfully.

Then I got home just in time to give a family member a lift to the hospital, because he couldn't drive himself. On the way home, I got a call from Amber, asking if I could come to my mother's to help move a few things. This turns into a substantial activity that takes the majority of my afternoon, as I moved a major pile of wood from her front yard, where it had been left when a tree was removed, into the back yard.

When I went to pick Elijah up from daycare, and was on the way back to my mother's to continue moving the wood, I was fairly upset. Frustrated, my brain was firing off in its usual way, "I really should be at home working on the book. I can't believe I'm wasting my time moving wood. This is not helping me at all on the project!"

Then it hit me - this was the project. I was helping my mother with something she needed done. That, and that alone, was my project for the time being. The book, I reminded myself, will be written. Now it was time to move the wood.

Time is one of the hardest things for me to give, because I feel like I have so little of it. I work a full-time job and run my own business, which essentially includes (at any given time) two distinct part-time jobs (About.com and whatever other writing project I'm working on). But today, I felt not only willing, but glad, to be giving up my time for this task. There was a strange peace in it (except for the brief period of time where Elijah attempted to argue with me over whether or not he was allowed to play in the truck bed with an unstable mountain of firewood), and that was nice to reach.

Anyway, end of story: I got the entire pile of wood moved, and now on to the next day of giving ....