Mom: What are you doing? We can call now, I’m free.

Me: Played basketball in the afternoon, then ran to meet friends to play soccer, then rushed to a tea party. It just ended. So busy…

Busy indeed. It feels as though a day contains fewer than twenty-four hours. So often I am halfway through something when I realize how late it has become, and the whole thing trails off unfinished. (This entry, for example, was filled in the next day.) At the tea gathering, a friend went straight to the heart of it: “Could it be that you are interested in too many things?”

You cannot have both the fish and the bear’s paw, as the ancient saying goes. Sometimes I imagine myself perfectly capable of managing my time, but the procrastination in my bones and my hatred of schedules always wrench the ending toward the less satisfactory side.

You can spend a thousand hours and accomplish nothing. There will always be small things in life to kill time, and countless fleeting moments stacked up make a lifetime (not really). My time is limited, so I need to prioritize things and plan accordingly based on that. At the same time, I must realize that time is also a quantifiable cost. For example, spending more time cycling just to save subway fare is obviously unreasonable. But as for taking a taxi… sometimes saving a bit of cash gets you a whole meal, doesn’t it (

Most likely, though, I will still sprout wings at the last moment, transform into Timing Man, and finish everything exactly on the deadline.