TIME ....
I am a child of the 60s and was a teenager when the iconic LP “Dark Side of the Moon” was released. You remember the one – with the prism on the cover. Anyways one of the tracks was called time – and included the lines – “so you run and you run, to catch up with the sun but you’re older. Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.”
Cheery! But there is some truth in the matter. I do wonder if “I missed the starting gun” – though of course spending so much of my time gambling and then having to deal with the impact of my losses did not help matters. Gambling does not only take away your money – and (to a certain extent) money can be replaced, time cannot!
So, what are the impacts of gambling on your time?
Well – the time spent in action, at the machines (or in the bookies / casino) is just part of it.
There is the time it takes to find the money to gamble with. This could be extra hours worked, time spent selling stuff (or buying stuff to sell,) just to gamble away the profits!
Then there is the time spent setting up loan accounts, writing to lenders, dealing with court cases.
Also, there’s the time spent in recovery, going to GA meetings – in some cases the time taken to get to them. I travelled all over the north of England and that took some time!
Time in on-line forums – in counselling – reading self-help books …
Whilst I didn’t spend a lot of money on my recovery – it did take an awful lot of my precious hours and minutes, which isn’t really something I thought about when I was in action.
Of course, I don’t regret getting better and some of that time spent learning about myself and my issues has been life-changing to me.
I do regret wasting time on the machines and the hoops I had to go through just to keep going financially – with second jobs and loan applications and all the time spent worrying about it all, when I could have just been enjoying myself.
So, does it really matter? We all have to spend time. We just choose to spend it in different ways. But a lot of my post-gambling activities were not a choice. These were things I needed to do in order to get well both mentally and financially. Needs always come before wants.
Seeing things through a child’s eyes, I didn’t only feel the lack of cash in our house – I also felt the lack of care. My father chose the bookies over me. Looking back, I acted as if it didn’t bother me and, in a sense, I fathered myself (I think I still do to a certain extent.) My sadness is more for him, that he missed my growing up. That he had no part in my life after the age of 13. Indeed, that he wasn’t around when I was a young adult – that he didn’t see my marriage, didn’t meet my wife.
And now … Now that I no longer worry about gambling? Well I am aware that my time is limited in every country that I visit. I started writing this post in West Wales where I was staying for just one week!
I managed to visit the coast, tour the countryside and go for a walk in my local area (stamp around my territory!)
I would also have liked to go on a dolphin watching trip, visit some of Dylan Thomas’s haunts in the area – get back to Swansea (I only visited once on a job interview and vowed I would return to see more of the city.) Visit the Gower peninsular.
None of that happened.
I’m not shorter of breath (not by much anyway) but I am in need of a nap most days – and simple things seem to take a lot longer.
Booking somewhere on Airbnb for example (which is the subject of another post) or even the setting up of this blog, which I am certain would have taken less time had I been a younger man.
Gambling and time is a strange partnership. It is a well-known fact that there are never any clocks in Casinos or Amusement arcades – they don’t want you to know how much time you are wasting in there. You can’t even tell the time by the light through the windows as most are blocked out with screens etc. Time ceases to have any meaning. I recall reading about trauma and the brain and how the hippocampus is mainly affected. This part is connected to our memories, our sense of strategy for the future and time. These are three things that are also affected by gambling as when I was in action – I seemed to forget all the previous times I had been in and lost, I had no thoughts of the future, no strategy for life – that I was damaging myself over the long-term. Also, I easily lost track of time.
Now I am in recovery, I find I have time to do some of the things I couldn’t fit in whilst gambling. Time to travel, time to walk in the countryside – that straight contradiction of being in a darkened room with flashing machines. Time to explore new music, art, books. Time to learn new things, a language, history, Shakespeare, to write Haikus. When I walk at the coast now, I see people surfing, sailing, flying kites, windsurfing, taking photographs with specialist cameras, rock-pooling, birdwatching, beachcombing, making art. All alternatives to the gambling that I was doing on the front. All positive skills, exercise and health boosts.
I’m typing this whilst looking out over an orchard associated with the cottage that I’m staying in. There are a couple of dogs lying about in the sun – enjoying the last few hours of daylight. The older I get the more I understand the lying in the sun bit – not needing to chase around to get things done.
I know that I am lucky. Lucky that I am not still gambling, lucky that I made sure that I kept my house payments up – that I kept a car running, that I am able to follow my dream – even if I have left it until my 60s to do so.
There are many who don’t make it – when the time just runs out.
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