What a year of hours buys

You have said it before, probably this year: there is no time. No time for the language, the gym, the book, the call to your father. It was true the way most true things are true, which is to say not entirely. The time existed. It was already spent. It just left in pieces small enough that nobody counted them, including you. A wallet emptied one coin at a time never looks like it is being robbed.

Do the arithmetic yourself, with your own numbers and nobody else's. How many cigarettes on an ordinary day. How many minutes each one really took, counting the walk outside, the standing there, the coming back in and settling down again. Multiply those two. That is your daily bill. Now multiply by seven, then by the weeks in a year, and keep dividing until the answer stops being minutes. What comes out is measured in whole days.

The bill was worse than its total, because of how it was paid. Attention does not come back the moment you sit down again. Every break cost you the break plus the return. There was also the noticing, the planning, the running low, the checking of pockets before leaving the house. None of that appeared on the count and all of it was time. You were not busy. You were interrupted, over and over, by the same appointment.

So the honest question is not whether you have time. It is what you intend to do with the days that just came back. Do not leave them unassigned, because unassigned time gets eaten by nothing in particular and leaves no memory behind. Name it now. One thing you have wanted for years and always had a good reason to postpone. Say it out loud, then put its first thirty minutes on this week's calendar. God handed the hours back. Spend them on something you would be glad to be found doing.