Make Time.

So, here's my hopefully inspirational thoughts for this week:

I don't have time to blog.

I don't have time to exercise.

I don't have time to eat healthy.

I don't have time to read intellectually stimulating books.

I don't have time to keep my apartment clean.

I don't have time to read the Bible and pray regularly.

And I'm guessing you don't either. We all have huge commitments and demands on our time, whether it's jobs, school, children, our families, volunteer work, or something else. In my case, I spend about 60 hours a week, and often more, reading cases, preparing oral arguments, doing my work-study job, editing manuscripts, getting ready for meetings, writing papers, preparing for exams, reading, reading, and reading some more. That's just regular law school life, and I would assume that many of you readers have very similar demands on your time no matter what your main responsibilities are.

And I so often fall into the trap of just saying "I don't have time": no time to do any of the things I mentioned earlier, things that are really important to me, good for me, and/ or necessary for keeping my life running smoothly. But it's occurred to me lately: so what? So what if I don't have time? I never have enough time in my day. There will always be an excuse available if I choose to rely on one, and I'm kind of tired of settling for my typical excuses and ready to be better. If you wait till you have time, it will never happen. Make it happen anyway. Go to the gym anyway. Spend some time in prayer anyway. Just do it anyway.

I don't know exactly what this will look like for you, or even what it will look like for me, since I'm just now really starting to make a concerted effort to fit in the Really Important Things no matter how busy I am, regardless of the fact that my Moot Court competition is this Friday and I have an important paper due Thursday. For me, today it meant that I spent 20 minutes running the stairs in my 10-story apartment building even though the day was too jam-packed to make it to the gym. It looked like me coming home from Moot Court practice at 9pm and baking sweet potatoes and cooking brown rice and ground turkey to have food ready for healthy meals the next couple days. It may mean spending less time online to squeeze out a few minutes for prayer, or delegating or rearranging some tasks to get work done as efficiently as possible so that truly important things get done. I am ready to stop settling for less than my best, to stop making excuses, and to stop acting like a busy schedule is a reason to avoid taking care of my home, body, mind, and spirit.

You're always going to be too busy. Just do it. Make time.