adjusting one's time from

Hello, I find it difficult to grasp the meaning of one particular sentence in the book "Lie to Me" by Natasha Preston.

Here's the context: the main protagonist has just fallen apart with her boyfriend (her fault). Now she ruminates on the lonely weekend she's supposed to spend on her own. Simon—the name mentioned in the following excerpt—is her former partner. It goes like this:

,,Before Kent, I didn't really do much anyway, so I should be used to being alone and spending my time indoors reading or binge-watching TV, but I'm not. It's even harder than adjusting my time from when I was with Simon."

My question concerns the last sentence: How do you understand it? Does it mean that it was easier for her to find something to do when she was with Simon than it is now when she's single and after the breakup? It seems to be the logical explanation but at th same time it's such an obvious statement (usually when you're in a relationship with someone, you have less free time) that I began wondering whether it might mean something else.

Thank you for your help!

Welcome to the forum 🙂
I believe she means "It's even more difficult filling my time after Kent than it was filling my time after Simon" ~ though it doesn't really say that 😏

ewie said:

Welcome to the forum 🙂
I believe she means "It's even more difficult filling my time after Kent than it was filling my time after Simon" ~ though it doesn't really say that 😏

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Right, it would make more sense this way. I guess it could be a mistake in the text...

Let's call it 'loose phrasing' ~ this kind of thing is pretty common 😑

MargoRoth said:

,,Before Kent, I didn't really do much anyway, so I should be used to being alone and spending my time indoors reading or binge-watching TV, but I'm not. It's even harder than adjusting my time from when I was with Simon."



Thank you for your help!

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Bad sentence from the author of that book. "adjusting my time" is not an idiomatic expression, for starters. It sounds like something said by someone who has spent a lot of time binge-watching TV. But that's a stylistic problem.

"It's even harder than" indicates that two things are being compared. But what are those two things? What comes after "than" is one of them: "even harder than adjusting my time from when I was with Simon". What is the other thing?

If readjusting after Simon is the harder thing, "than" is ungrammatical. That structure with "than" makes "It" the harder thing.

But if "It" is the harder thing, as the structure implies, what is it? I think you may need to provide the sentence preceding the ones you have supplied.


The chronology of Kent and Simon is not clear.

MargoRoth said:

"Before Kent, I didn't really do much anyway, so I should be used to being alone and spending my time indoors reading or binge-watching TV, but I'm not. It's even harder than adjusting my time from when I was with Simon."

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That is a very poorly written sentence. I can see why you didn't understand it.

My guess is that Ewie's suggestion is the intended meaning, but that is only because it makes sense contextually, not because we can arrive at it from the original wording.