Time in Abundance

What might you do if you had time in abundant supply, but very little freedom?

Reader Contribution by Leslie C. McManus
Published on March 3, 2020
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by Nikki Rajala

What might you do if you had time in abundant supply, but very little freedom? It’s a question I’ve considered since writing an article about a Maryland inmate.

During his time in a correctional facility, Robert Stickel has busied himself by re-creating tractors, trucks, cars and aircraft in scale models. And yet, as a prison inmate, his access to both materials and tools is extremely limited.

Coaxed to life out of sheets of cardboard, each of Robert’s hand-crafted models weighs about as much as a dream. If your memory stretches back to the days when you built a glider out of balsa wood, that’s a useful point of reference.

As a writer, it isn’t my job to judge. Each of us is allotted time; each of us face challenges, whether they are self-inflicted or random. Awash in freedom, how do we choose to use our time – and our gifts?

More than a few folks I know fill at least some of their time with Jeeps. I know this because my husband has toiled long and hard to create a highly customized off-road vehicle. Such vehicles apparently have a magnetic pull so strong that they actually draw in others of similar persuasion, and so it is that we tend to travel in packs. The sure-footed mountain goat has more sense than to go to the places we attempt to reach, but that is a topic for another day.

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