Margin

I found some margin this morning.  It looked like this -

I sat and read for as long as I wanted to read.  A large chunk of time is my favorite thing in the world.  Of course, during this time I occasionally felt inklings of "I really need to be doing ________."  But I squashed those feelings and decided to read until I got tired of reading.  So, now I feel like I can do _______ with energy rather than with irritation. 

This is a portion of what I read this morning in the book Margin -

"The gods confound the man who first found out how to distinguish hours!  Confound him, too, who in this place set up a sun-dial, to cut and hack my days so wretchedly into small portions." (Plautus in 200 BC)

I also learned that mechanical clocks were first made in the 1200's and the wristwatch not until 1865.  It is interesting that as we have created things to more accurately track time, we have become more of slave to it.  I hope that we can all find some large chunks of time this Christmas in order to take back our margin.