Choices

When you get to a certain age, you are constantly aware of how little time there is.

And, if you've played your life cards in a certain manner, you know that there are four important categories in your life. And figuring out a way to devote the proper amount of time to all four at the same time is life's greatest mystery.

Faith, family, work and health -- go ahead -- try to spend time equally on each. It's almost impossible. I've found I can handle three of them perfectly well, but I have to ignore the fourth to do it. There are just not enough hours in the day to devote to all four in equal fashion.

So that requires choices: which very important element of my life am I going to ignore today? All four require one's absolute attention. If you ignore one of them, you are sure to get a heap of shit for it at some point.

So I spend most of my time ignoring one out of necessity, juggling the one I ignore to spread out the neglect a little, and then making it up to the ignored, while ignoring another category.

Or I do what I do so very well: choose to ignore most or all of them so I can drop down to a subcategory of life: free time.

Free time, of course, includes card collecting.

Card collecting consumes just about all of my free time, but even this subcategory is divided into categories that I must choose: buying, sorting, recording, blogging, trading, shipping and simply enjoying. And if you think there's not enough time to satisfy the four main categories, imagine the neglect and out-and-out abuse that goes on within my hobby.

I am constantly abusing one of the elements of my hobby. Criminal abuse. Five-to-10-years abuse. Send-the-dogs-to-the-shelter abuse. And I am constantly forced to make choices. What will I choose to do in my very limited free time today?

It will always be like that. I will never perfect the time I give to the hobby or distribute it equally. The to-do list will always exist.

Today, what I choose to do is track some cards for some outgoing packages and blog about some cards I received. Everything else gets neglected.

These cards arrived from Kerry at Cards On Cards. By my count, this is the 56th card package that I've received from him. Somehow I've managed to document all of those packages in the spare few minutes I have until someone hounds me about one or more of the Big Four.

Most of the cards are Dodgers from current sets, something I choose to continue to collect while also choosing to spend less time on them to focus on past sets.

I must collect my Corey Seager cards though.

And my Kershaws. I still choose to collect my Kershaw cards.

And legends. That's an easy choice.

But when the choices wander into "cards of players no longer on my favorite team," "unlicensed cards," "pre-rookie cards," and "yo, those are not even cards, they're stickers," then I wonder.

Is this choice hurting the other choices on my menu? Should I cut back on some choices (would I really miss a 2014 Prizm Draft Picks card)? There is so little time!

For now, the answer is "no". It's simply easier to define myself as a team collector who collects it all and ascribe to the theory that by not being more selective I'm actually saving myself some time.

Right now, I choose to believe that.

I consider myself lucky to have that choice.

Or to have any free time.

But hang on, I think something from the Big Four is requiring my attention.