Time Poverty v's an abundant universe

I'm a bad person. I am forever conceptualising myself as being time poor. This I do admit is partly to do with the fact that I am a workaholic and self confessed addict of being constantly busy. You would think that I would have an immaculate house as a workaholic - as I dont have a job outside of the home - but that's not the case. I can assure you that I don't keep myself busy with cleaning and ordering our home! But I digress.

Last year after we came home from the Bunya Mountains I wrote an article called The Tyranny of Time on being time poor. In retrospect it probably had more to do with me mourning and working through my need for freedom, more so than being caged by time constraints.

Yesterday I worked out that Buddha was true when he said

'its your mind that creates this world.'

I have this in a frame, a beautiful present from my soul sister Karen. Next to the words is an endless and lovely vista of mountains and a valley - seen through the open window of a house. It always challenges me to think of free open spaces and not the cold cage of the house - because that's what I want. I've often wondered about it, but perhaps never quite 'got it' -that was until yesterday, when I put it into practise ....

If I think there is a time deficit - I open up a time deficit in my reality, like my own little Midkemian rift. It becomes a self fulfilling prophesy that I fill with ample of amounts of procrastination and other things that inefficiently sap my time and my willingness to committ. I'm sure that I am not the only person on this earth that this happens to. And it's always at a time when there are more than enough things to fill a normal day plus some more.

So - contemplating all the things that I needed to get done yesterday (morning pages and AW committments, two articles to write by Friday, a short story to review for submission, a magazine to complete, new years cards to research and create,Fiction Friday entry, daily blog ... and then all the normal mundance daily stuff) I literally freaked out. This time though, rather than wallowing in the 'there's not enough time, woe is me, I'll just get apathetic and give up now' I tried to conceptualise my time in abundance rather than as a deficit.

I reminded myself that this week Dave is away, which means that I dont have to feel guilty about planting myself infront of the computer at night. And I decided to use all of those time bytes during the day to best effect. I write my morning pages after I've had a quick check of my email in the morning and while Dylan is having his turn on the computer for the day. Whenever a little piece of time opens up, I think about how I can best fill it (and if push comes to shove I'll do a little bit of housework - 15 minute blocks can achieve amazing amounts!) Today I filled it by giving my Goddess pack a quick shuffle and noting down the different Goddesses that came up for different friends and I begin to organise the New Years cards I'm going to make and send out next week.

I slept badly last night and internetted myself into oblivion until 2am, meaning that this morning I had been everywhere, read all I wanted to, commented on more than I probably needed to. I also bruised my bony right elbow from leaning on it (usually an indication that I've been on the internet/computer far too much!) So when I turned the computer on bleary eyed a little after 7am - I opened my magazine program up and started work immediately, basically without thinking (because there were little cerebral processes turning over). This seemed to be in keeping with FlyLady's motto for 2008 'Do it now - make it great in 2008'. And surprisingly - I got quite a bit done before it was time to go off and write my morning pages (aka sharing the computer!)

And now, as I glance over at the clock its still 20 minutes to go until 10pm and while I haven't attacked those articles, that I keep deluding myself will be easy to write, I have put a huge dint in the work that I had to do for the magazine, including clearing three adds that have been hanging over my head (I'm looking forward to getting the bartered services for their creation!) Which means tomorrow I will be happy to get up and attack it again ... and with any luck Friday will roll around with the magazine ready to go our for proof reading and my articles done ... and well yeah I know ... you can dream.

This is a long winded way of saying - if you want something to be a deficit it will be - if you want it to be abundant it will ... the power of positive thinking is just that, powerful. It conceptualises the world in which we live, how we react, carry ourselves, our perceptions, our ability and will to function.

So - I can honestly say this time around time is one my side, yes it is. Oh thank you Mick!!

PS: I should also point out - that the motherhood fairy dropped by this evening and with a tap of her wand, she put Dylan to sleep on the home stretch of our evening walk (he was in his pram) meaning that I could settle down to work on the magazine at 7:30pm which honestly - is just unheard of. I dont remember the last time he was asleep that early. So yeah - create your universe and then the universe will support you ... or the motherhood fairies!

The Tyranny of Time

I wrote this a few weeks ago when I was struggling with my place in the world and being time poor - your comments about time Dali inspired me to put it up here ....

'Time is on my side,
yes it is'
Rolling Stones - 1965

The irony of it is, at the moment I don’t feel as though time is on my side. I feel, what has been recently coined ‘time poor’ (but not necessarily money rich, which is the flip side of the phrase). What I want to do, experience and achieve in life, far outstrips the actual physical hours available in a day, and therefore I feel personally impoverished, despite lots of love, joy and achievements of other kinds surrounding me. My time poverty doesn’t come from trying to juggle a paid job and family responsibilities. It comes from being a fulltime stay at home Mum and voluntary worker who has no family support to fall back on. It comes about also, because I don’t use the precious little ‘me time’ I have efficiently or effectively to make me happy. I often fritter it away, subsumed by the internet and other modern distractions, in a trance like state, simply being in the space, rather than using the space. Yesterday at the Ipswich Workshop Museum once of the placards had scribed on it ‘the tyranny of distance’, but for the majority of us in the 21st century the real tyranny is time.


As we get older, we all comment that time seems to slip away far quicker than it did when we were young. As a child it seemed that a school year took an eternity and even the six week summer break seemed an forever (exacerbated by the fact that after four weeks my sister and I were hell bent on doing serious damage to each other, and Mum was counting down the days until school begun again!) This was in the days of the three term year. I vividly remember the worst time type of time distortion was when we stayed with my Nanna and Pa, and I would wait for my cousin to come and visit on a Sunday. I can still see myself, as a small child looking up at the clock and barometer in their tiny hallway … counting down the hours until 11am would arrive, and so would my cousin. The hours passed slowly, but it was a agonising snails pace that would bring 10:45 to 11:00am and her arrival.


When we desperately want time to slow down – when we are pushing ourselves to complete a task (school or university assignment, work report, or just making it to an appointment on time) time always seems to conspire against us. There never seems quite enough of it to help us out. However when we want it to speed up (when we’re waiting in a line at the bank, supermarket or petrol station) there seems to be such an excess of it, you wonder if you could bottle and store it for times of deficit. Our experience of time is never really constant or predictable, despite the metronomic changes to the digital clock face (I remember the alarm clock my parents had where the numbers were on small white tabs the actually flicked over each minute, so not only was the passage of time visible but audible as well)


Time can have an oppressive resolve that is difficult to fight or befriend. Anticipation warps and slows time, as does impatience, ambivalence and being pissed off. Think of waiting in the airport for a flight that is perpetually delayed and you are have been advised not to leave the departure lounge – how quickly do the hands on the clock move? Anything that generally makes us unhappy seems to slam the breaks on the passage of time. Nothing is more sinister though than the distortion of time that comes with the descending cloud of depression and black moods. Those who experience chronic pain have a similar relationship with time, as those with depression. In the few sunlight moments, time is fleeting as you try and hold it, to keep it from slipping away, striving to make it last just a few hours longer, then the eternal darkness of emotional, psychological or physical pain takes you in its embrace again and time becomes an endless void.


The subject of time was discussed on TripleJ’s Hack program last week. The focus was lost time, with people asked to call in with their experiences of having lots time. Some call backers spoke about their battles with drug addictions and depression, others regarding bad relationships. The later hit a note with me. I have struggled for many years now not to look at the years from Sept ’96 to Sept ’99 as ‘the lost years’. These were the years I spent with my not so nice ex partner in country NSW. In those three years I could have finished a uni degree (still only half completed) or travelled half way across the world or more (passport still unused in the bottom draw). It was hard to try and integrate those years into the fabric of my life as positive experiences not shadowed with regrets. In time I came to understand that I had a wealth of encounters and experiences in those years; amazing people, even more amazing places, a chance to run two business and motivate young people into creating better opportunities for themselves. I learnt more about myself in that time, than I had in the previous 26 years, developed skills and abilities that have stood me in good stead in the years since and taught me what love and respect really are, what I will and won’t stand for in life. This was a similar theme to those TripleJ callers, who admitted that although they were regretful for the time they had lost, they had learnt much as a consequence of their experience.


As soon as I became a mother, and had the 24 hour care and responsibility of a baby, I did become truly regretful for having not used my time more wisely prior to becoming a Mum. The tyranny of time, became the tyranny of unaccomplished dreams and desires as I felt my timeline contract to hold just myself and my small baby, one hourly breastfeed at a time. I felt ripped off for having so frivolously wasted the time at my disposal in the years past. I thought about all the books that I that wished that I had already read, the movies I wanted to see, the countries and cities that still remained unexplored except through other’s stories and photos, the uninterrupted conversations that I might not have again for a decade or more, the degree I still did not have, the simple pleasures such as sleeping in or doing not a lot of anything that were now just luxuries of a bygone era for me. A certain amount of grief came with these enlightenments of time extravagances and wastages. It took a lot more than the pure and simple joy of the bundle in my arms, to integrate and feel OK about it – to be at peace with the knowledge that the time had passed, but there was plenty more ahead to explore, experience and enjoy. It created a passionate intensity in me to really seize the day, understand what my priorities and goals were so I would never be left standing by the wayside with a bag full of half fulfiled dreams.


I’m not totally at peace with this part of my time troubles, because they are so inextricably tied in with freedom – in reality time and freedom are inseparable. When you feel free time expands and hurries by speeding you along on its wings, however when you are imprisoned time shrinks down to claustrophobic proportions, leaving you feeling as though it is barely inching forward. The only answer I can come up bridging the time/freedom quandary, is to find a balance that allows me to indulge in some freedom, some me time and bring my experience of time into equilibrium again (if it ever actually was- after all, before being a Mum I was always complaining about having not enough time to sleep, so some things never change!)


Finding balance so time does not become a fearsome and pitiless dictator is a challenge for anyone who identifies as being ‘time poor’. My tools at the moment are walking, mediating and writing. These fulfil several important personal goals. Walking always unclutters my mind, relaxes my body and gives me a sense of freedom … and you can’t beat being in nature even if it is smote with suburban development and peak hour traffic. Meditating allows me to turn my mind off and tune into myself. Writing suspends time and gives me the opportunity to explore and document my life. Walking and writing have always been priorities, and I have always keenly felt their absence when I haven’t made space for them in my life. Meditating is new. I recently read an article by Patricia Fry http://www.matilijapress.com/articles/write_meditation.htm on Meditation Walking for writers and understood that I have being doing this unknowing since adolescence. I’ve also indulged in this type of meditative, creative process during long distance highway driving (this was where my creative inspiration for running children’s programs came while I worked in NSW and my creative problem solving has always been based). A balance of mind, body and soul seem to be a good starting point to befriending time again.


My other aid is simply being in the moment, and letting both the past and the future dissolve. It’s almost impossible then to be held hostage by clock, it can only move forward one moment at a time as you experience it. There will still never be enough hours in a day to complete everything I need to, let alone all the projects and assorted asides that I want to, but I can only ever be in the here and now. There’s a lot of time to waste fixating on either the past or present, and when you’re already time poor, it seems like a tragic waste. Fighting the tyranny of time poverty is also about simplifying your life, or ‘down sizing’, deciding what the really important elements of your life are and making them priorities.

Time is on my side … almost!