The book I was reading when the new year began was Take Back Your Time by Christy Wright, who advocates a five-step process that can be described as time management only as a shorthand. “Life management” may be more precise but that sounds a little too grandiose and controlling.
Anyway, the five steps are: Decide what matters. Stop doing what doesn’t matter. Create a schedule that reflects what matters. Protect what matters. Be present for what matters. (Details in the book.)
I was tinkering with creating a schedule when this thought entered my mind, an old thought that often recurs when I tinker like this: We have divided our weeks into seven 24-hour days, so 168 hours every week. Take away 7 times 8 hours equals 56, and we’re left with 112 waking hours. Set aside 40 hours for the day job, and 72 discretionary hours are left.
We’re in charge for more than 10 hours a day, on average.
Shouldn’t that be enough if we use the hours well?
I oversimplify. I admit that. My main point is that every day has time enough, if we remember to seize it.
(I thought perhaps to hold this thought for a Monday, but then I realized that on Friday for most of us, the two freest days of the week are before upon us. Go for it!)
The forced closure of theaters two years ago changed the way we watch movies. The last film we saw on the traditional big screen was Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker in December 2019. The government’s decision to shutter the movie theaters led me to the conclusion that for the price of two tickets and a bucket of popcorn, we can own the Blu-Ray for infinite replays on our widescreen TV and a box of microwave popcorn.
So these days if there’s a movie I really want to see before it hits Netflix/Prime/Whatever, I buy it as soon as it’s available. It means not sharing the collective experience until three or four months later, but so be it.
And so it was that I watched “the greatest Marvel movie ever” for the first time on Wednesday morning, trying to imagine the impact in the theater when Andrew Garfield and then Tobey Maguire show up playing Peter Parker, not to mention the joy of seeing Alfred Molina reprise my favorite comic-book movie villain, Doctor Octopus, and Willem Dafoe as the Green Goblin again, and all the rest of the Sinister Six Minus One.
It was almost as good as I thought it would be. I always love Tom Holland and Zendaya as Peter and MJ; I think they have the best chemistry of the various permutations of Peter Parker in love, and back in Homecoming I was rooting for him to fall for Michelle even before that magical moment when she said, “Call me MJ.” I was truly moved by the scene when Garfield-Spidey rescues MJ and gets some redemption for failing to save his Gwen.
I had managed to avoid spoilers enough to be surprised by Aunt May’s fate and impressed by the way they wove Uncle Ben’s famous words into the story: “With great power comes great responsibility.” In fact, I was impressed by the way they wove all eight Spider-Man movies into one multi-dimensional reality.
I have a bone to pick with the resolution of the movie’s central issue, Peter wanting the world to forget that he is Spider-Man. The matter is resolved by having the world forget Peter Parker altogether, which is vastly different from what he and Dr. Strange were attempting early on. That’s what keeps me from agreeing with the critic who declared Spider-Man: No Way Home the best Marvel movie ever.
It’s pretty close to the top, though. For what it’s worth, it didn’t quite knock Spider-Man 2 off my personal favorite Spidey film list, although with Molina in the cast and just as wonderful as the first time, it had a fair shot.
Spider-Man has been a part of my life for almost 60 years now (Good grief, that makes me sound old), so I care about these characters like old friends. I appreciate the way the recent films have reinvented the Spider-Man mythos while remaining true to the spirit of the original books. And this one is easily the best of the post-Endgame Marvel efforts.
(The post-credit scenes have lost their charm, though. The second one especially felt more like a trailer for next month’s Doctor Strange movie.)
“Hello, Muse, are you out there?” he asked, taking a deep breath and positioning his fingers to write. “How can I serve you today?”
The fingers trembled a bit, but no words came. He looked up and saw the phone, sitting on a box on a book stand, the little electronic connection to the world that he carried in his pocket.
“Pick me up,” the electronic toy beckoned. “Lose yourself in me.”
“N-no,” he told the toy. “I promised myself I —“
“You would what? Deny yourself a news update? Keep yourself in suspense as to whether the package really will be out for delivery today? Not know whether anyone Liked your comment? Miss all your friends’ comments? You know you want to. Pick me up. Come on. You wanna.”
He stared at the persistent electric nag and saw his addiction. It had become his go-to time filler, a place to glaze his eyes while he was between tasks — even during a pause in his task. It always pulled him in and away from his real life.
But he had made a promise to himself.
“I will not let you control me,” he said, even as the impulse took control and it began to require serious energy to fight it. In the quiet of the morning, a raging soundless battle ensued.
He began to inch forward in his analog task by making a new promise, to reward himself with a digital peek when he completed his morning goal. In the corner of his mind, he held onto a conviction that it was OK to break a promise and yield to temptation if you agree not to yield until after resisting for a certain period of time.
He employed the old “one moment at a time” tactic: He could resist the temptation for just this moment, right? And now this moment … and on and on.
The words kept flowing onto the page, and the temptation waned a little, but the fear he could yield at the next pause remained. “Better not to pause, then, mate,” he told himself, and he kept going.
Having set a goal to fill three pages before allowing himself to peek at the phone, he declared victory at the bottom of the fourth page, even if his victory included, in part, several paragraphs written in the third person about being addicted to looking at his cellphone.
“Take that, you miserable electronic demon,” he said, reaching for the device. Just before he picked it up, however, he stopped, looked into the sky, shook his head, and left it alone.
“You’ll regret this!” the phone screamed at him as he walked away. But he never did.
