“I got, got, got, got no time.”  The lyrics to that song by a 70s band called The Guess Who have been stuck in my head all morning. Although I was laid off in a downsizing over a year ago…yikes, make that two…I am still amazed at what little time I have to do all the things I used to dream of doing as I clocked in and diligently worked in my cubicle for someone else’s bottom line. OK, I’m exaggerating. I do have the time. Why, I’m even an empty nester. It seems I just don’t have the time management skills I had when I was staring at deadlines, clocks and calendars full of doctor appointments, PTA meetings and watching life pass me by with everyone else’s agenda. Although I never have the need to say “T.G.I.F.” or “Man, I hate Mondays,” I’m often stumped even knowing what day of the week it is.

So for all of you who are frazzled and feel like you have no time on your hands between the kids, soccer games, school functions and work, I can’t promise you it gets any easier even when you wake up with the whole day ahead of you…just for you. “Gee, I wish,” you’re saying. “Want a little cheese with that whine?”

Being too young to retire, yet “mature” enough (read: wiser) that the h.r. people are looking at my resume and saying, “Wow. She’s…uh, old,” I’m caught in an abyss of rejection and renewal all at the same time. In a way, it’s a godsend. I’ve pulled my canvasses off the dusty shelf to paint, have time to create culinary masterpieces that take longer than a three-minute zap in the microwave, and I get to write. So why do I still feel like I don’t have enough time in the day?

Sounds appealing, yes? That’s the good news. Here’s the bad. In order to enjoy the enlivenment and incalculable wealth of time one spends quietly in the beauty of solitude, you have to make the time to do it. That means you have to cancel some forms of connectivity in order to reconnect with yourself. Cell phones, Twitter, Facebook and texting tend to steal away precious moments of the real lasting connections in life. Yes, you’ll be on top of your friends’ latest announcements of what they’re up to, but that just subtracted precious time from what you want to be up to. With your head buried in your cell phone, you may miss that split second of seeing your child’s face light up when he realizes he’s tied his shoes perfectly for the first time. It will detract from your taking ten minutes to drive to the store and pick up a few cards to send a sweet handwritten (yes, it used to be called penmanship) note to your aunt in the nursing home (and it might just keep your neighbor from losing his job at the postal service). In short, all of these so-called high-tech connections will detract from a time for wonder, nature and life.

A big buzzword these days is “multi-tasking.” I call it a waste of life. Instead, slow down and focus on a quiet hour to yourself to enjoy the process of kneading dough, reading a book in front of a sunny window, or washing dishes by hand in warm, sudsy water. Most of these small windows of opportunity for peace and quiet exist. You just need to seek them out. Trust me, you start washing dishes by hand, and your family will scatter like flies. There’s a method to such madness.

So take your time management skills and set aside some time and discipline yourself to read your emails and Facebook updates for only 20 minutes a day, then stop, drop and roll…write in that blog or journal, leave the office and talk a walk, call an old friend, bake a cake, color with your child, lock the door and take a warm bath. Turn off your computer…the internet will go on without you. And go explore a passion.