I ask myself the question “Where does my time go” over and over again as I never seem to have enough. The days feel shorter then they used to, and I constantly feel like I am rushing from one thing to another and miss out on just being.

I know that I am not alone in these feelings and that there are plenty of people who feel the same. In today’s world everyone seems to be juggling more things then ever before. Is it because we want so much or is it, as I suspect, just the way we now live?

In our jobs, it is common to work over the hours we are contracted for, and this has become the norm. We go in a little earlier to get a head start or we leave a little later to finish something off and when was the last time we actually took a full lunch break? Does an hour lunch break even still exist? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining as I said, I think this is the way we now live.

Many people, including myself are juggling working along with their home and family commitments. I work full time across two jobs and my husband works full time, between us we juggle the household chores and family life and most evenings collapse on the sofa exhausted. I'm lucky that I love both my jobs and feel honoured to be helping people in both roles. I have worked for TheGivingMachine for 13 happy years and always feel a great sense of achievement that we support thousands of good causes to raise much needed funds using our fundraising platforms. Have we always been this busy or has the world got busier?

When I speak to older generations in my family and hear how life was harder when they were younger because they didn’t have all the gadgets we now have to make our lives easier, I feel guilty for feeling sorry for myself and complaining about how little time I seem to have. But then they tell me, that they had more time in those days, life didn’t seem to go as fast as it does now.

My children are old enough now that they do not need looking after like they did when they were younger and I wonder if I could have coped with juggling working full time with childcare and dropping off/ collecting from school and activities as well as dealing with the household chores and the answer is no, I don’t think I could have. So how do people do it?

Now I hope you are not expecting me to come up with an answer for how to manage your time because I’m not sure there is one clear answer.

I know that most of us are fed up of talking about the pandemic so please forgive me for bringing it up but I feel it is important to comment that the pandemic has allowed my husband to work from home full time and me to work solely from home in one of my jobs which has eased the pressure on our household and has saved us the “time” spent commuting. As the working world continues to open up, will the returned commute add another ball to our juggling act?