Would you rather have money or time?

When I was younger, I always thought time as being flexible. I seemed to have SO MUCH of it, and not enough money.

I very willingly traded my time for money (.. I worked..) and felt happy to give something for “free” (my time) for something I needed (or thought I did at the time) — money.

Now as I am older, I am starting to feel a little different about the whole thing. I am not entirely swayed one way or another, but I no longer see time as “free” and “easily exchanged”.

Time is far more finite now.

It may not seem like that — retirement is so far off it seems — but time disappears and doesn’t get renewed.

Money for me, is much easier to earn now than ever before. I could certainly pick up another job at minimum wage and make even MORE money, or throw myself into this blog even more, but… at what cost?

Time.

That’s the true cost.

It’s not that I don’t love having money, don’t get me wrong… payday is still my favourite day of the week, but now I am really cherishing time a lot more than I did before.

No matter how much money you get for that time, you can never buy that time back.

Especially after having had Little Bun, and reminiscing from when he was just a tiny little thing (the size of a small stuffed animal, no joke), to this little boy, this BIG little boy, I am seeing that time really is fleeting.

It is truly, the longest, shortest time of my life — it is both long and tiring (as evidenced by my Week of Money posts), but it is also so darn short in the grand scheme of things.

My baby will never be a baby again, and my little boy is changing and growing up to be his own person right before my eyes, but so gradually that I sometimes take it for granted.

Then I look at my own life. I see that I have so many unfinished things .. personal things I want to accomplish, like my travel journal (circa 2008!)… like beading more jewellery (read: my run with DIY Galaxies Jewellery), or just reading. All the books, the thousands (literal thousands) that are unread on my reader because I kept prioritizing other things – work, this blog – over personal tasks.

I regret it, but I don’t necessarily feel like I would have done anything differently, if that makes sense.

I regret that I didn’t think about all of this until now, but I also don’t regret it because I did what I thought was right at the time.

I haven’t necessarily lost anything with Little Bun for instance — he is still the closest to me, and I will always be his #1. I can see that what I have done with him in the time I did have, has done amazing things and yielded such a rich result where he is shaping up to be the little child I have always wanted, even with all of this squealing and daily nonsense.

I’ve done good so far. No, GREAT.

So, how can I truly regret any of it?

What I am thinking more about though, is what I want to do going forward.

I’m a true workaholic in my heart, and I cannot help but .. try my best at everything I put my hand to. This is something that is good, but also bad because it means I get so engrossed in being THE BEST that I forget that sometimes it doesn’t have to be THE BEST.

Good enough is sometimes enough for now. It’s a hard lesson to learn.

I want to prioritize reading more in my life than before – to actually spend half an hour a day reading (okay, let’s say 15 minutes to be realistic).

I want to stop throwing myself into work so much, and to do that, it means I need to stop spending so much so that money and income become less important factors in my life to keep working and saving.

I want to make it a point each weekend to actually focus on Little Bun. Not as a side thing, while I am cleaning out my closet or running errands, but to do actual stuff meant to do with him together, like take him to the park, take him for a walk, and focus on HIM and being with HIM as he is growing up before my eyes.

I want to also, last but not least, focus on making my partner a bigger focus in my life. I feel like sometimes he gets shoved aside or ignored because Little Bun is screaming his lungs out, and it isn’t fair. He is as deserving of my attention as Little Bun and we have to work on being US again. This is not something he is asking for, but I don’t like that we are so tired that we sometimes just can’t take 5 minutes to hug each other.