Standing out on a client’s back deck today I recalled what I’d said to her at the consultation. I told her people don’t really understand time. People always thinks it takes longer to do a task than it does. I told her if you want to understand time get on a treadmill. That is when you learn how long a second can last. I suppose exercise is better than torture but it has to be close. Especially when you’re nearing the end of a 30 second sprint and start counting down from ten. Each second counted off is as sweet as water to a man in the desert.
I thought about this today because I had let her puppy out to potty, back in to eat, back out to finish his business and done it all in seven minutes. Originally she had wanted the twenty minute visit because I know she couldn’t envision someone doing all that in ten to 15 minutes but I could have told her it was perfectly possible. I am very efficient.
It happens a lot with us. Someone will start out asking for a 30 minute visit and then slowly but surely it will decrease. It could be about saving the money or it could be a realization that time moves slower than most people realize or that we can get more done in certain increments of time. Her I am writing for ten minutes. I am always surprised with how much I can get done. We have just crested the halfway point right about now and I am running out of things to say.
The goal however is to write for ten minutes. It is to write whatever thoughts come into my head. Which is why I am reluctant to call this journaling because I cannot promise that the thoughts that come into my head will always be honest or my own. Who knows exactly what a person will write when they are filling space waiting for a timer to go off.
Time is certainly a funny thing and it works different person to person. I think of my wife and how her I will get to it soon means within the next two weeks where my I will get to it soon means within the next two minutes. My wife does almost nothing with a sense of urgency. Some people are just like that. There was a potential client my wife told me about today. I’d emailed them four days ago and they had responded. I had missed it. I sent a shot in the dark email out thinking we’d already blown it and proven ourselves unreliable. Low and behold they responded and the consultation is set.
And there is time. A merciful end tonight. A thing I am certain will not be the last.
David Huzzard Writes 