Hey buddy, can you spare ... the time?

Wouldn't it be nice if there was a bank or exchange that traded in time. Seconds, minutes, hours ... you get the idea. Then we'd never be able to claim that we were too busy, that we didn't have time for something, because we could simply go get the extra we needed.

I'm a high school music teacher. It's not what I do, it's who I am. Anyone who does anything similar to this will understand that statement. You don't shut it down at 4:30 on the clock or on the weekends, because you don't ever truly clock out, not if you're passionate about it.

June is high season. December, too, but June ... that's when everything seems to culminate in a 24/7 lifestyle. I eat, sleep and breathe end-of-year and graduation events. There is barely enough time to wash and change clothes each day before it starts again. The thing is, I love it! It's one of my two favourite months of the year, the other being (if you couldn't guess) December. All the long hours of hard work and careful preparation pays off. At the end of it, I'm exhausted but there's this particularly sweet feeling of satisfaction that I can't compare to anything else. That's what makes the effort and the time spent worthwhile.

The thing is, there are only so many hours in a day and when you take most of them for one thing, something else gets the short end. Or someone. And it's difficult to justify that when the someone is your kid. My kid is amazing, I keep telling everybody that. He's strong-willed and confident and outgoing and responsible and kind-hearted and all that at seven years of age. I hate it that my job steals time from him ... that's not quite right. I have to acknowledge that I've made the choices which take time away from him in December and June. That's when I wish there was simply more time in a day. But my kid is great. He tells me that this is part of my job and I need to do the best I can at it all the time or the rest of the time won't really matter, no matter how hard I work. Damn, I hate it when my own words come back to nip at my heels.

If you had just one more hour in each day, what would you do with it?

And, because I'm in a thoughtful state of mind now, here's an interesting Palindromesque video ... watch it all the way through, it's only 1'44"