releasing time as an enemy

“what is time anyway?” - time is a complex, beautiful experience to befriend

throughout my lifetime i’ve often found myself, and observed others, ‘battling’ with time. pushing against it, forcing a way through the day, week, what can feel like a lifetime even, in preoccupied discomfort. clawing and clinging and shoving ourselves into tiny little spaces of joy between the anxiety of time. i don’t just mean the “i’m getting older and I’m gonna die” kind of battle but also the smaller “there’s not enough time for _____”. which can easily translate to “there’s not enough space for the multitudes of emotions, ideas, existence that is me”. a lack of present, mindful awareness. a lack of experiencing life. 

as with everything, the relationship i have with time has morphed and sprouted and grown into something i now feel able to dance with instead of always being stunted by.

so, i’ve put together some notes on what i’ve found to be the symptoms of holding time as an enemy, some remedies, some practices to help implement said remedies and befriend time again, and some affirmations related to time to keep the mindset sustained. here we go. 

the symptoms: 

rushing

i think one of the most apparent symptoms i notice in myself when an unhealthy relationship with time has started to form is rushing. getting things done in the quickest way possible. half assing them to mark them off the to do list in my mind in hopes that i’ll spare myself some time to be happy or even just to do the other things that are also on said to do list. moving from one task to the next without any real awareness of the experience. which often leads to mistakes, forgetting, and hyping my nervous system up to a place that then requires my attention (and time) to regulate. maybe you can see how this can easily become a draining cycle. one that i know to be avoidable but that can be so easy to slip into if not careful. 

procrastinating 

also along this cycle of dysregulation caused by rushing is procrastination. and while i do believe that procrastination can be a symptom of many things (see attached video on procrastinating), when in relation to fighting time it comes for me in the form of avoidance. whether it be at the start of the cycle when overwhelm has set in and there are many tasks to be done, both “desirable” ones and not, or once i’ve made it towards the end of the cycle when burnout is present and i’m exhausted, procrastination seems to show it’s face. sometimes, for me, this looks like doing everything except the thing i need to do, or simply flopping, curling into a little ball of dismay, pacing back and forth in my mind until i freeze up and can neither rest nor accomplish anything. and this in turn can often lead to cramming. another idea that only feeds anxiety rather than soothing it. 

conforming to someone else’s timeline 

i think you know what this looks like. feeling like something should be done by a