Tuesday, February 23, 2010

The luxury of time

Wouldn’t it be great to have the time to organize even the most obscure messes in your life? -- to finally clean out the junk drawer; know what greeting cards you have in that box in the closet; actually make a list of all your user names and passwords in one place.

My suggestion would be to move to Brazil.

Simply put – I work about half as much as I used to in San Francisco. In a good (bad) week I work about 25 hours. The rest of the time is for me - for Luiz and me. For Zozó, Luiz and myself. Qualidade de vida.

Here’s a mundane example of how I can use my time to organize the things around me. Remember – the things around me are printed in Portuguese!



We have an inordinate amount of topical cream tubes in our medicine cabinet. I have long since lost track of for what reason we'd purchased these creams. But I do have a recurring skin allergy that needs attention, so I need to know which medication is best under the circumstances.

Today I decided to sort everything out. And I had the time to do it. My list includes the name of the product, in Potuguese as it appears on the tube, and its medical indication, in English. Problem solved.



Life here is slower, for sure. And that has its multiple advantages.

1 comment:

The Reader said...

Such a good idea, especially when you factor in that often the medical indications, rules/directions are not printed on the tube or bottle, but only on the insert in the box.

And, yes, if you need more free time, move to Brazil. Things definitely move more slowly here - thanks for pointing out that is sometimes a good thing.