What I Would Do With More Hours in a Day...

Earlier today I was thinking, "Man. I wish I had more hours in the day."

A typical day for me starts at 6:00 A.M. I hit the "stop" button on my phone-alarm, then go back to sleep until 7:00 A.M. Then I wake up, force myself out of bed, hit the lights and grumble about how tired I am, and stumble into the bathroom to shower. (Yes, literally. Every morning. Unless I'm late. And then there's a lot of swearing and adrenaline pumping and running replacing the stumbling.)

Between 8:00 and 8:30 A.M. I leave for work. Arrive between 8:30 and 9:00 A.M. depending on the morning and how much sleep I got the night before. Then I turn on my computer and begin my day. For those curious, I'm a project manager.

Between 4:30 and 5:00 P.M. I leave work. I don't take a lunch break because I only eat once/day on weekdays, sometimes on weekends, so I leave after eight hours. Then I spend about 30-60 minutes on the freeway and finally get through the 17 miles of traffic.

I arrive home, and usually spend about 60 minutes catching up with my husband on our days. We exchange frequent text messages through the day, so we fill each other in on the outlines of the day we've notified each other about. For those keeping track, that puts the clock around 5:30 to 6:30. (Sometimes 7:00 if it's been a long day.)

Then we both pad into the computer room and sit down at our computers and begin our respective hobbies. Usually this means WoW (World of Warcraft) if we're playing together, and when I'm on a writing kick like I have been lately, for me it means writing and my husband it means programming and playing another one of his games with his friends. I also check my e-mail, my blog, my Livejournal, sometimes my Twitter, and often times Kindleboards just to see if there's a conversation I want to join in on. All the checking takes around another 30-45 minutes.

Time check? Around 7:00 to 7:30.

Then it's FINALLY time to open the Word document. To begin writing. To open that elusive portal into another world only inside my head.

But. I'm thinking about some e-mail I forgot to send at work. A project I'm working on. Some stupid comment I made that made me look like an idiot in front of a room full of people. So I can't really concentrate. The flow is wrong. (I still write anyway--you get into the groove eventually.)

Eventually around 10:00 P.M., sometimes midnight if we're really going, and sometimes 1:00 - 2:00 if we're REALLY on a roll, we'll stop to go to bed and watch TV and eat some food. Yes, you'll note I never mentioned eating anywhere in there. We have horrible eating habits. Then we fall asleep to start the daily grind all over again.

So today I was thinking to myself--what would I do if I had more time in the day? What would I do with extra hours? If I didn't work? And I actually Tweeted about it, but I thought I would post this and see if anyone else wanted to share their lists, too. <3

And so, I lovingly call this list...

What I Would Do With More Hours in a Day

• Actually USE the Fluidity bar I wanted for over a year and finally purchased, because I seriously love ballet and miss it.
• Make awesome, gourmet meals, because I actually really like to cook, and I'm sure my husband is tired of eating food from a can or a frozen pizza.
• Play more WoW--I miss playing WoW. But when you have to choose between the creative streak and a video game, you have to choose the creative streak while you still have it.
• Clean the apartment--it would be nice to actually clean the place myself instead of hiring a housekeeper. I think I'd get a lot more satisfaction in it.
• Buy a couch, so we could actually have people over. (Okay, maybe this is a one-time thing, but man, we SERIOUSLY need a couch...)
• Read more. I miss reading. I do. But there's never time for it.
• Write more. I always have to stop, and I abhor stopping. It breaks the flow, and when you're going back to edit, you can totally tell where you started and stopped.
• Stop by my husband's work--just to say hi and bring him lunch occasionally. Because I love him.
• Organize my DVD collection. I have HUNDREDS of DVDs, and they're just in a mess on the shelves because I don't want to take the time to sort them together. Season Two Dawson's Creek is next to Season Five of the X-Files, squished between Robin Hood: Men in Tights and Castle: Season One.
• Back up my computer files. 'cause you never know when that virus is gonna hit and wipe everything out... Just saying.
• Study literature. Really study it, not just enjoy it.
• Learn how to ride a horse. Because I think it would be cool. My husband warns me it would be painful.
• Attempt to write like Rafael Sebatini. Then laugh at myself for failing so miserably. (Hey, at least I'm practical, right?)
• Get my PMP (Project Manager's Certification) and MBA (Masters of Business). Not normal degrees for a writer, but I still want to be able to show them off to my kids some day and be like, "See? Mommy pursued her dream AND held a steady career. You will do the same."

So, it's not a comprehensive list by any means, but those were just things that popped into my head when I thought about it.

How about you? What would you do with more hours in the day?