Becoming Organized by Managing Time

The extra hour we gain by springing forward into Daylight Savings Time is really a restatement of time, a clock adjustment, instead of making a 24-hour day into one of 25 hours. I always questioned that claim of an extra hour. We get more sun by the earth's rotation and other planetary vibes, instead of from some old-time agrarian concept of helping farmers have more time to plant in the Spring, which is what the history of Daylight Savings Time truly is. However, this 2021 spring forward in time holds a lot of promise to getting 1 hour closer and faster into a post-Covid-19 world. So, I am embracing Daylight Savings Time this year with new meaning and vigor. I have defined this time-organizing self-awareness into 2 categories: 1) Pandemic Time and 2) Cardinal Time.

Pandemic Time

I have had the stark awareness through the 4 seasons of the pandemic that I have to manage my time better. All of us have felt the spinning out of control through this Coronavirus-time, with family and friends becoming ill, my family included. Many could not even mark the time of passings due to Covid-19, and that has produced a very sad time, indeed. My heart spends reflective time with each of these lost souls and hurting families. I feel this deeply. But especially as we proceed now through Covid-winter, into the enlightenment of vaccines in this Daylight Savings Time of Spring, I feel hope.

Yet Pandemic Time has been weighty, and weighty in a lot of ways. We are inside, in quarantine perhaps, working from home, or organizing spaces differently to remain sane while stuck indoors, equally due to ice storms and blizzard snow as it is to Covid-19. Covid-winter has been chilling in temperatures and in numbers lost. I have had to work really hard at getting up each morning, at times, or in going to bed at a reasonable time, after binging videos and TV shows on YouTube and MHz, which has international shows. I secretly dream of my time to travel again, so I practice French and Italian while watching international series, biding my time.

But I have had 2 big accomplishments in managing my Pandemic Time demands. First, I have to make sure my cat, who is diabetic, actually gets her insulin shots 12 hours apart, generally at noon and midnight. Here she is, and her name is Abby:

She is gentile in nature and loves to pose. Abby is actually my adult son's cat, but I care for her, just as I care for my son. He is a Covid-19 survivor from last summer, when my time spiraled out of control like no other time in my life as my son battled Covid-19 on his own in his apartment. My time in my house felt surreal--my worrying thoughts were out of time sequencing entirely, constantly thinking about my son. So, literally, making sure Abby got her insulin shot kept me going as my son recovered. Taking care of her was also taking care of him, in its own way, and it organized my day.

Abby's times for me are the best of both worlds of daylight and night time. These markers of time have kept me organized by what I can plan to do before Abby gets her daylight shot. Coffee. Breakfast. Shower. Dressing into new clothes. Or Not. It's Ok. Decisions. Read email. Review Zoom calendar. Noon. Cat's shot. Got it! Then it is as if I have been launched into a full 12 hours of productivity before she has to have her night-time shot. Am I always productive? No. Do I try to be time efficient? Yes. Do I always succeed? Sometimes. But now, I have more sunshine-time to manage my stuff, post-shot for kitty, in the afternoons due to Daylight Savings Time.

My awareness of time efficiency during Pandemic Time through the enforced schedule of insulin-shot management has been really productive, because sometimes I have to find something to do for 30 minutes before noon's shot. Mail. Nope. Not going to manage that pile right now. Makes me add unplanned phone calls when I have other things planned post-shot.

So my second Pandemic Time accomplishment had to be more pragmatic, have lasting time-management benefits, and be visually pleasing. So I found a purpose for a little peg hanger that had been stuffed behind books on a bookshelf as an ornament, a knick-knack, observed and forgotten for its potential purpose.

I previously had to always spend time, frustrating time, looking for my keys. Now, I don't. They hang on a peg with my fashionable masks and medical ones that I wear underneath. Yes, I wear 2 masks every time I leave my house, with my keys, and without frustration because I always know where my keys are. So Pandemic Time has helped me focus, in its own odd way, on the little things, like not misplacing my keys. And as masks are, part and parcel, key to our futures, I utilized this little peg organizer for a dual purpose. Little projects like this one have come to possess lasting rewards.

Cardinal Time

However, my time-organizing self-awareness wanted more that just inside details. As winter's wind began to rage, as if reflecting all our collective anger at pandemic restrictions, and the chilling fear at the unseen Covid-19 enemy became amplified by freezing temperatures, I simply had to get outside. I decided to feed outside birds because I became aware of their outside presence and different chirping sounds by listening while sheltered inside in my quiet solitude. With regularity, I heard the "Chip, Chip, Chip" of cardinals at about 4:30 PM every late-afternoon. Enter Cardinal Time.

So I bought a puffy, peach-colored coat to brave the winds while I set out bird feeders and feeding stations. Not only red male cardinals and reddish-brown female cardinals arrived right on time, but also squirrels, chipmunks, a variety of woodpeckers, purple house finches, goldfinches, wrens, juncos, beautiful white doves and gray doves, blue jays, lots of sparrows, so many sparrows, and probably a few hawks arrived as well. I began to relish in my front yard, bird-feeding bonanza, and I was buying a lot of bird seed. In spite of the chilling temperatures, I soldiered on through wind, snow blizzards, freezing rain, and then through the arrival of Daylight Savings Time. Before 4:30 PM every day, I filled my bird feeders and feeding stations.

Some of my bird and small animal feeders are improvised, keeping in mind my Pandemic Time lessons learned of looking for the purpose in little forgotten things. So I put broken pottery trays into a planter basket and created a bird feeder. If I added black-oil sunflower seeds, I knew Cardinals would come. And they do, daily!

This male cardinal with distinctive wing colors is a frequent flyer at my feeders, every day. I am proud of capturing this shot through my front door. All wild birds spook easily and in the event of light snow, as on the boxwood leaves and in the feeder itself, any feeding success can ensure the bird's survival during freezing temperatures. I have gotten to know which cardinals have mates, who is more robust or older, and when one specific shy female cardinal arrives. She likes to ground feed on seeds, or seeks a safer site, so I created a few specific feeding sites for her. Granted, other birds enjoy them too.

Yes, this is a tall twisted-branch, knobby pine with sweeping fan-like branches that provide great cover for birds and birdseed. The cavern photographed here goes about 4 feet back to the trunk from the tip of these branches and provides a great place for birds and animals to shelter. The visible black oil sunflower seeds and some scattered, mixed, unshelled seed in a lighter color are favorites of my shy female cardinal. She arrives at 4:30 PM with the others and waits for up to an hour to feed, so I often make 2 trips to my yard to refill her favorite places as evening approaches.

In spite of my dedication and her tenacity, I do not have photographs of her, yet, as Cardinal Time is motivating. Thinking Forward. Future Ideas. Goals. Promises. Plans. Enlightenment. I will get photos of her, though, but this tree is distant from my door, so I remain hidden inside so as not to spook away birds feasting on their daily new-found bounty. Moreover, in late evenings, after all the birds have found their roost, the neighborhood bunnies arrive at this tree cave too. Lovely Cardinal Time.

With all this vitality and life-affirming busyness, the intersection of Cardinal Time and Daylight Savings Time brought about a few changes in thinking as I organized my bird-feeding time. Spring forward 1 hour means that 4:30 PM during Pandemic Time was really 5:30 PM now. My cardinals still arrived at their appointed body-clock time, which has been reorganized for me to 1 hour later. And with the planetary rotation granting longer daylight times, I had to become more creative in feeding stations because my birds and squirrels, particularly, were feeding longer. Thus I began to fill a tree trunk cavern with peanuts to make a game for crafty squirrels, who are quite the acrobats! They play along.

Squirrels hang from the top of the cavern to snatch a peanut or launch their front paws while holding on to one of the smaller branches in order to grab their favorite snack. I am working on getting photographs of their antics, but, in time, as it gets warmer, I will have to set up a blind that hides me so I can capture their scampering portraits unnoticed.

Cardinal Time is, thus, a time of creative thinking and forward-looking accomplishments. One evening last week, my shy female cardinal decided to bravely investigate my front door area where I have a few seed trays. In a flash of recognition, she was gone, but her presence sparked an idea. I found several of my broken, Italian, red-clay pottery pieces and crafted some ground feeders for her under the boxwood hedge outside my front door. Yes, this is my photographer's bribe, I fully admit, but one I hope she accepts.

Obviously from the black-oil sunflower shells, this recent addition to my feeding stations has been a popular improvisation. A few skittish chipmunks have found it, but my eye awaits for my shy female cardinal. I add more seeds here at about 7:30 PM also because hungry sparrows and squirrels seem to like this site later in the evening, I have found. So be it.

I claim my cardinals and birds, as well as all the small furry animals who I have helped survive this Covid-19-Winter--as mine, just as I claim my son and my cat. The birds and animals are waiting for the cycles of Summer to bring on new life, and so are we awaiting for the newness of life, as yet undefined, post-pandemic, but seemingly rebounding with the renewed awareness of the Daylight Savings time we have gained.

Therefore, Cardinal Time right now is also a time of waiting, but this waiting time asks to be organized by the flutter of activity that the birds bring to me. I will continue to look for the smaller tasks that I can organize in the time given to me between cat shots and bird feedings. Time has organized me. So maybe I can start organizing my piles of mail, or the kitchen cabinets, or the outdated laundry I won't wear again, or my lipsticks as I contemplate wearing lipstick again. But time for this awaits. We have time, with endless possibilities.