Sometimes, I feel worn out and I think I know what the problem is. It’s the extra five minutes. You must know what I mean. We’ve all been saddled with a whole list of extra chores that nominally are supposed to take five minutes each, but often take longer. Plus just about everything now takes five minutes more than it should or used to anyway.
How about some examples? It’s instances like being placed on hold when you phone a company to order something or to lodge a complaint. At regular intervals a voice breaks into the music to tell you how important you are to the company you are trying to contact. That’s nice, but it’s not stopping my blood pressure from popping a capillary.
It’s when someone leaves you a phone message, but the call-back number is so garbled or spoken so quickly that there is no way to figure it out. Or they’ve forgotten to leave it at all. Then there is the look-up time, since the message must surely have been important.
It’s waiting in line at the variety store for who knows how long while someone who does not have a visible means of support, but does have a rainbow-riches dream, buys 25 scratch-and-win lottery tickets. Then they proceed to play them on the spot.
It’s the extra time spent twiddling your thumbs while your PC or laptop boots up. New virus and spam detection software has mired your operating system in high-tech goo. Heaven help you if something goes wrong with your computer. The five minutes stretch into hours. You end up talking to a technician from wherever. Proper manners dictate that you spend a few moments in polite conversation while all you really want to do is curse.
These are the five-minute blocks of time that go along with the more complicated and faster-paced world that we now live in. They at least have the benefit of being spent on ways to improve one’s own quality of life. But there is another whole category of additional activities that we must now engage in “for the benefit of all mankind.”
I’m particularly upset when some new government regulation is introduced which means more work to be carried out. It’s always reasonable and therefore justifiable to those who propose it. It’s sorting garbage into three or more piles – refuse, recyclables and potential mulch. It’s breaking all boxes down and tying up cardboard before placing the bundle beside the curb. I apparently now work for the mayor and the sanitation department.
It’s carrying a linen bag to the grocery store to save on plastic bags. It’s taking a mug to the coffee shop so as not to pollute with styrofoam cups. It’s installing every manor of safety feature imaginable in our homes and cars. And it’s making sure that the batteries are replaced when they start to chirp like crickets. It’s taking our pets to the vet for the proper shots and to renew their licenses. One doesn’t want to get caught by city inspectors, who are out in force.
Each of these measures is perfectly reasonable in its own right. Career-making politicians ask how can you not do such and such when it will only take a few minutes of your time and is clearly the right thing to do. It will save the environment or it will enhance your family’s safety by a significant factor. Or it will improve life for all of the world’s children and all of the other helpless creatures that inhabit this spinning orb.
What’s the responsible thing to do? What kind of an example are you setting? What kind of a person or parent are you? I’ll tell you. A tired and a broke one, that’s what kind.
Here’s something else to consider. None of the five minutes is ever just that. There’s also interior dialogue time. There’s what-do-I-have-to-remember time; and frustration that it’s taking too long time; and afterwards down time. There’s mentally reviewing what you did and was it done correctly. There’s also the time spent each day feeling guilty about not getting on with the latest nagging little chore right away.
I want to save the planet too. Where else am I going to live? Does it really all have to rest on my shoulders? There are nearly seven billion people on this planet. Somebody probably should have spoken up sooner. Our species needed to evolve into better people some time ago.
The problem, as I see it, is that it is not just a case of one five-minute segment given over to some specific task. It is the accumulation of those five minutes. I’ve counted them up. In the course of the day, there are now 25 such five-minute duties that society demands we take on. Do the math. That means two-and-a-half hours of extra work that has to be crammed into the waking hours or stolen from some other function, like making a living or snuggling with my wife. Even if I don’t have a legitimate grievance, she does.
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For my first book, “Two Scoops” Is Just Right, please click here for the paperback version and here for the Kindle e-book version.
For the sequel, “Three Scoops” Is A Blast! (with the award-winning “Size of the Skip”) click here for paperback and here for Kindle.
For “Four Scoops” Is Over The Top (containing Hemingway short-listed “Caboose Follies”) click here for paperback and here for Kindle.
And finally, for my latest book, “Five Scoops” Is An Addiction!, please click here for the paperback and here for the Kindle digital version.
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