It seems life has a way of running a couple of steps ahead of us.

Lately, despite not being as productive as usual, I have the feeling I don’t have enough time! As you can see, I barely write here these days, even though I have a couple of blog ideas in mind.

So how am I spending my time lately? Well, I’m glad you asked!

Taking into account that any given week I work from 9am to 5.30pm (make that 6pm, really) that fills up quite a chunk of my time. Add about 40 minutes of commuting to that, on a good day – on a bad day it can take me up to 80 minutes!

Most of the days I need to eat something as soon as I arrive home. It’s not the usual hey, I’m going to have a snack sort of situation, no. It’s a full ohmygoshI’msostarvingI’mgoingtostartbitingmyarm sort of situation. Since my fridge is very likely to be completely empty, bar the usual bottle of sauce, or the odd piece of cheese on any given day, I will probably need to stop at a supermarket en route. I don’t know if you’ve done grocery shopping while hungry, but any savings article will advise against it: everything will look delicious and you start adding products to your basket based on how they look and how hungry you are. In my case these might include chocolate (if you’ve known me long enough you will know I never eat chocolate), different bags of crisps, cheese, crackers, bread, and even 3 kilos of different vegetables. Now, let’s be honest here, it’s great to buy vegetables, not so much when you’re shopping for dinner that day and maybe lunch tomorrow, and you end up buying broccoli, cauliflower, spinachs, Brussels sprouts, asparagus, carrots, potatoes (5 kg bag, of course) and maybe even a cabbage. Think, please, you’re only one person (two now my brother is around) and if I ate all that in two meals I would probably transform into a vegetable myself. Now, I know that’s not possible and I also know there’s no correlation between eating vegs and becoming one, other than the famous you are what you eat, but honestly, haven’t I learnt anything yet?

All the cooking aside, then it’s time for my scheduled hobbies to take over my free time. On Mondays I normally go running, either with the running club or on my own.  Tuesdays is the day I attend an African drumming course (this one happens late in the evening, so that’s pretty much all I do on Tuesdays). On Wednesdays, I try to go running again, this time on my own.

As you can see, on Mondays and Wednesdays my routine is to rush back home, get changed and go for a run. On my way back, stop to buy food (trying to ignore the hunger) and go back home to shower, cook and have dinner, meaning that I’m free at about 10pm if I’m efficient.

That’s already three days of my week completely booked.

Once you look at an average week, I normally am up to many things! A week ago I had two friends visiting, the week before I had a night run, an introduction to kite surfing lesson, engagement drinks… Only last week I had a company party, drinks at home with a friend and my brother, and another friend for lunch.

I’m always told that I do way too many things but the way I see it is that I do the things I enjoy the most, be it socialising, or writing, or walking around, or even watching films. If they take up most of my time, well, I say it’s time well spent. That means that now I can’t go around without having to carry a diary with me, and that in many cases my friends need to give me a couple of weeks’ notice, but I also book some time slots in which I have nothing planned, just in case a friend needs a shoulder, or to move things around, or simply to sleep and get my batteries charged!