I journal every morning, a habit I developed after reading The Artist’s Way years and years ago. It helps me figure out what I’m thinking, what I’m ignoring, what I’m actively trying not to notice, and what I should definitely be paying more attention to. Part of my process is copying affirmations that seem appropriate to the day, week, month–however long I need them in order to get the message through to my stubborn brain.

For quite awhile, I’ve felt harried and constantly short on time. I never seemed to be able to accomplish any of things I wanted to, even small things like a brief morning meditation, or sitting and reading one of the many books waiting patiently in the bedside queue. Or doing my laundry. Or getting enough sleep.  Recently, in an attempt to fix this on-going problem, I added “I always have all the time I need” to my morning affirmations. Five times, long-hand, at the end of each morning’s journaling session.

Eventually, my stubborn brain noticed how much of that “all the time I need” ended up being sucked into the void of my smartphone, how long those journeys down the rabbit hole would last, and how much that contributed to my feeling of my time not being my own. And how often those timetrips were taken while lying in bed at night when I should be sleeping or in the morning when I should be getting up and on with my day, and all the things I had been lamenting my lack of time for.

Okay. Sometimes I’m slow, but when I do finally figure something out, I’m pretty good at deciding that if what I’m doing isn’t working for me, then it’s time to Do Something Different. And the something different I chose seems like such a small thing, but I decided that I would no longer look at my phone from the horizontal. No more phone time in bed. Period.

And just that little change, that little something different, allowed me to read a novel last week, for the first time in what seems like forever. I’ve also started reading another book this week, got my house a little tidier, and now, here I am: “finding” the time to sit at my computer and write this little blog post.