Today is October 24, Take Back Your Time Day.

TAKE BACK YOUR TIME is a major U.S./Canadian initiative to challenge the epidemic of overwork, over-scheduling and time famine that now threatens our health, our families and relationships, our communities and our environment.

Did you know...

• We're putting in longer hours on the job now than we did in the 1950s, despite promises of a coming age of leisure before the year 2000.
  
  
• Mandatory overtime is at near record levels.
  
  
• On average, we work nearly nine full weeks (350 hours) longer per year than our peers in Western Europe do.
  
  
• Working Americans average a little over two weeks of vacation per year, while Europeans average five to six weeks. Many of us (including 37% of women earning less than $40,000 per year) get no paid vacation at all.
  
  --taken from the website

This is a "secular" initiative, although I think it has obvious spiritual implications.

The goal is to raise awareness (it's patterned after Earth Day) and also advocate for more family- and worker-friendly policies relating to vacation, sick time, and part-time employment.

How am I spending Take Back Your Time day? Working a 12-hour day at the church, with a meeting in the morning and another in the evening.

Eh.

Tomorrow I will have some breathing space. It will be my own TBYT day.

And next August's "tickler" file has a note in it to consider how our Kairos Ministry, a contemplative ministry at Suburban Pres., might engage in some publicity around this idea.

How are you spending your time today?