Renegotiating my Relationship with Time

I’ve been thinking a lot about my relationship with time. It’s a complicated one — that’s for certain. So much so that a few sessions ago, my therapist observed that time seems to be the third entity in the room with us. Regardless of what we’re discussing, there is always some element that brings us back to time.

It’s something that I’ve been pondering for a while, but as she shared her observations, it really caught my attention.

So, I inquired.

When I take myself back, I can trace my complications back to 4th or 5th grade. At that time, I had learned in school about how many hours of sleep are needed at each age to function “optimally,” and I took. it. to. heart.

I knew the time I had to wake up every day to make it to school, so I could deduce what time I needed to be asleep in order to be within that window of “optimal number of hours of sleep.” And, if I wasn’t asleep my that time? Cue: panic attack.

My dad used to watch the news upstairs outside my bedroom, and if it got to the sports section of the newscast, I knew I was past my need-to-be-asleep time, and I would go out to him in tears. My sleep anxiety got so bad that he had to stop watching the news.

I was a high-functioning human, even at that age, and although the evidence showed that I was still more than OK despite how much sleep I got, I continued to allow time to have this power over me. I was convinced that I could be better, do better, if only I had more time.

Pair that self-imposed belief of inadequacy with growing up in an environment that wore busyness as a badge of honor (and unconsciously was used as an avoidance mechanism), and you get a reality that I lived in for years. This reality was one in which I believed that there was never enough time, that any spare moment I had needed to be filled with doing, and that busy equals working hard which yields financial gain which creates (an illusion of) security and safety therefore busy is good.

As I have been in the throes of my self-healing journey, where digging under the surface is par for the course, I am also cognizant (and quite proactive, really!) about not avoiding the discomfort, the uncertain, the difficult. Rather, I choose to go into those experiences and explore.

Can you begin to see the conundrum?

I have this burgeoning knowing and desire to not avoid the messier parts of life, and I also have been operating within a system that was created to avoid such examinations.

How this has manifested, especially within the past year, is that I have layered on so much guilt and so much shame to the truth that my life has been quite full. It has been busy. And I have been actively trying so hard NOT to slip into busyness as avoidance that I have berated myself when I disregard my own boundaries and find myself with yet another packed week.

Busyness continued to have a strong negative charge for me.

I built up so many stories around it that it seeped into my work. I would avoid certain tasks or projects because I was so certain it would take X amount of time, and I had to be in the right headspace to do that work, and it was going to be so hard. (Welcome to Procrastination City!)

And inevitably, when I would finally sit down to do the thing, more often than not, it would take me less time than I had thought, and it was significantly less arduous than I had anticipated.

This silly construct of time has pervasively caused so much stress and personal turmoil.

With all of this on my heart and mind, I went to Birmingham last week to visit my friend Erica Midkiff. Over the weekend, we attended Fearless Fest where I received a Tarot reading from Good Witch Mama. I went into it and asked Kristin about this complicated relationship I have with time, and busyness, and fear that I’m not seeing clearly about the culprit of this behavior. She pulled a 5-card spread for me, and the first three were all Majors (The World, The Fool, and The Sun), and the fourth card… Nine of Wands.

The energy of Nine of Wands is that of being busy and perhaps in a moment of time when it’s not easy or possible to stop. I think of it like that final slog up the mountain before reaching a landing to catch your breath. Legs on fire, back sore, breath heavy, but oh so close.

Kristin equated this to trudging through the mud, like the final chapter of a particular series. And what she said next reverberated in my being for days after… She said, “What if instead of choosing to identify with the mud, with the slogging through, what if you chose to simply flip the page?”

🤯Mind. Blown.

That simple question, that gentle inquiry, opened up a whole new world for me. It felt like finally I could step aside and emancipate myself from the narrative that time has power over me. I can choose to remove myself from the illusion that time is linear and that time is an exhaustible resource. As I feel many of us might be able to relate to those instances when time has felt like it’s slowed down or when time flew by, I am slowly awakening to the idea that time can be manipulated. Time is in fact all about being in right relationship to what is.

By implementing that subtle shift in perspective of choosing to “flip the page,” it feels as though I have entered into a new relationship with time. One that honors co-creation and is devoid of charge.

This week has been full, yes, but I have found myself not attaching to the busyness. Instead of identifying with the mud, with the slogging through, I have experimented with the notion of taking one step over where there is dry ground and where I can move more freely.

So far? It feels like I have been able to tap into something profound. I have done all that I have needed to accomplish, and then some. I have somehow “found” more free time.

It’s all still very fresh, so we’ll see how this continues to evolve, but for now, it feels exciting and powerful. In the meantime, if you care to share anything about your own relationship to time, any interesting books/resources on the matter… I’m all ears! Feel free to share in the comments below, or send me a note. I would really love to hear! xoxo