This ‘Ask Trev’ question comes in from Michael in Melbourne.
‘You’re a busy man. How do you make that work without either having a clone to help you out or somehow create a 36 hour day?’.
Well Michael it’s true, I am a very busy man. Between this blog, my radio show, working full time, performing househusband duties, managing my giant Transformer collection and building furniture for their shed, as well as hobby farming where I raise goats as well as ducks and chickens, boredom is something that receded from my life many years ago. Add on top of that the most time-intensive activity of all – being a father of two young children – and spare time in non-existent.
First off – I will never clone myself. Never! Do you know how big my ego is? How much attention seeking behaviour I indulge in? I don’t need another one of me running around telling my jokes, eating my meat and vying for all the attention that should rightly be mine!
Also I’m married. What if my wife can’t tell me from the clone? I don’t need no stinkin clone getting busy with my missus! Plus, Primus forbid, what if it turns out by some quirk of the cloning process that he is better in bed than me?! I don’t think my ego, large as it is, could take the hit of my wife saying ‘last night was the best sex we’ve ever had Trev!’ and I hadn’t even been at home!
As for 36 hour days, well manipulating the time stream to that extent is beyond even my capabilities. Sure I could take my family to Mars where the days are at least 25 hours long – I could get a lot done in that extra hour – but it seems like a hassle. It was hard enough moving my Transformer collection from one state to another without taking it to a whole other planet!
So how do I manage my busy lifestyle?
Well there are several things I do – some are time management and some are just sacrifice.
*Giving up hobbies: I have way too many hobbies. Like way too many. So some have had to be toned down and others sacrificed completely. This blog for example, has gone from an entry each week to about two a month. I’ve given up video gaming, though to be honest I think the gamer in me had run its course anyway. I used to brew my own beer and had to give that up. And I don’t farm as many fruit & vegetables as I used to, though still enough that each week we eat at least one or two things that come from the garden. I’m also a bit of a bibliophile, but reading a book for my own pleasure has been relegated to the odd 5 minutes in bed before blissful slumber.
*Multitasking: Except at work where it is a requirement, I don’t schedule. Don’t believe in it. What I do do is do multiple jobs in the same room at the same time. So for example when I’m in the kitchen (with quasi-laundry attached) I might be wiping benches, preparing meals, stacking the dishwasher, loading the washing machine and unloading the dryer all at the same time (well not literally – thanks to the failure of mutation science I only have two hands). Then the same goes for other rooms and even parts of the farm – nothing like chasing off some feral goats in the ute while you are on your way to go cut firewood in the back paddock.
*Be Married: Dear sweet Primus let nothing ever happen to my wife! Not only because she is the love of my life, but also because she does so many chores to manage the house & kids and our lives in general. Chances are if she disappeared from our lives my children and I would be huddled round a fire in tattered clothing, eating beans from a can and hoping it would rain soon so we could wash ourselves. Our existence would be akin to those survivors of a zombie apocalypse.
*Child Labour: Those damn kids can work for their food! OK, so maybe I don’t actually deny them sustenance and or send them down mineshafts to search for coal. But at 6 & 8 years old respectively they are at the age they can chip in with the chores. Every day after school, before they are allowed to go play with toys or video games, they need to help unstack the dishwasher, unpack their school bags, put all their breakfast and lunch dishes in the sink and most importantly go feed all the animals. Not only does it teach them responsibility, but it means they are spending time with their pets. How kids can ignore a real-life dog but spend hours training a dog to obey in Minecraft is beyond me.
Of course the children love to be involved with all the constant projects going on around the farm and house too. They help plant and pick all the vegetables, which not only helps me out but makes them more inclined to eat what we grow when it come to fruition. My son loves to help out with my construction projects and is currently helping me build a display table for the Transformers shed, and my daughter loves to bake with her mother and make muffins for their school lunches.
*And lastly, what I do most, is go, go, go! All day, every day. Sigh… Every. Damn. Day. I would be lying if there wasn’t part of me that would like to spend a day just lounging on the couch, eating potato chips and rewatching Deadpool movies. But if I wanted that I shouldn’t have had kids and chosen to live on a farm. Life is so rewarding, and so very, very tiring.
So that’s what I do Michael, that’s how Big Angry Trev manages his life. And maybe I have kind of inwardly cloned myself in this one body. There is Big Angry Trev the blogger, Big Farmer Trev the hobby farmer, Big DJ Trev the radio host. And most importantly (Big) Dad (Trev) the father. Big Gamer Trev is dead and buried but I hope to resurrect Big Brewer Trev at some point and start making my own beer again. But then that begs the question – would I ever have the time to drink it?
Thank you for your question.
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