before your eyes

If you're standing in the woods
and a year passes,
will you hear it?

Stealing Time Part Two

Yesterday I admitted to not being a good thief, listing several ways that time is stolen from me. As I thought about it more, I realized most of us live with one very real time thief in our own homes. Do you know what I'm getting ready to say? Brace yourself--the television. Percentage of households that possess at least one television: 99
Number of TV sets in the average U.S. household: 2.24
Percentage of U.S. homes with three or more TV sets: 66

If the average person watched TV a conservative two hours a day, that comes out to 14 hours a week. In one month, that's 56 hours. In twelve months it 672 hours, or 28 days. What could you do with 28 extra days in a year?

But according to A.C. Nielsen Co., the stats are actually worse than my conservative estimate, stating the the average American watches more than 4 hours of TV each day.

If you watch 3 hours a day, that's 21 hours a week, 84 hours a month, 1008 hours a year: 42 days.

4 hours a day, 28 hours a week, or 56 days a year.

Number of hours per day that TV is on in an average U.S. home: 6 hours, 47 minutes. At that rate, TV is stealing over 182 hours a month. One week of every month watching television and over 90 days for the year. What could be accomplished in that amount of time?
Books could be read and written. If the average TV watching American gave up one hour a day and worked out , it would dramatically change their health and relieve some of the health care costs.

Only 49 percent of Americans recognize they watch too much TV. What about you? How much time is your TV stealing??

Stealing Time

Can you steal time from twilight? I am not a very good thief. I have tried staying up all night, only to be forced to pay for it by sleeping through beautiful days. I’ve attempted to write or create through parts of the night. And I get away with it for awhile, but then, naps call to me until I fall into a chair and relinquish alertness for a coma. I may steal time—in a way—by multi tasking until it’s glaringly apparent that I am not good at either thing equally. I could steal your time…yeah, I could do that without even trying.
Instead, I’ll tell you all the ways time has been stolen from me. Like when I go shopping with my sister, which I am loathe to do for any reason. She has been known to take to identical pairs of shoes, and peruse their stitching, their eyelet configuration, the interior soles, the coloration of the leather and make comparisons for twenty minutes. When she can’t decide, she asks me, “Which pair do you like?” Honestly, by then, I don’t care. I’m less interested in nuances when I think precious daylight is a-wasting.
I’ve window shopped with a female relative who wanted more than her budget or mine could bear in a life time. She’s able to do this for hours. I’m bored after ten minutes.
I liked the way my dad shopped. He’d price something and think about it for days or weeks after. Maybe even save money for it. When he went to buy the item, he went in, picked it up, chose an unopened, undamaged box, paid and left. From the time we walked into the store until we stuffed the purchase in the car may have been ten minutes, and that was if we stood in line.
I could tell you about the people who dawdle in front of me below the speed limit. In our free country, they are free to travel at whatever speed they like. The only reason it irritates me is because they are wasting my time, stealing my time. Probably everyone has waited too long in a doctors or dentists office. Over the years, I’ve wised up enough to bring a book to read or a notebook to write in, so they can’t waste my time.
But stealing time? I already have too much to do in what had been allotted to me without taking it from people. My dad used to say, that whatever you steal will cost you three times the value. Since finding it to be true, it keeps me honest.