Time

In the past few months I've been able to create more time in my life & I'm so grateful.  & I feel guilty.

For years I worked fairly long hours at a few jobs-- or maybe just comparative hours for someone in their late twenties-early thirties in the eastern seaboard.  This winter Kevin made his case that I could teach yoga, Officiate weddings & baptisms on some weekends, plan a few trips a year, & work with him on landscaping.  The idea is that slowly we can self-create our schedule & prioritize more time at home growing food, baking bread from scratch, doing renovations ourselves, along with our creative & social justice pursuits.  After some negotiations I agreed, leaving a waitressing job that had been very good to me with gratitude & trepidation.

At first I bugged.  It felt really weird to be accountable to myself.  It felt weird to have these hours that I was responsible for shaping.  I worried (& worry) about bills "in this economy" & feel guilt that I was able to leave a job when so many are losing theirs.

Now I feel freaking spoiled.  So many projects that had been filed under "when I have time" are now possible to realize.  That's scary.  It felt frightening to approach projects that felt more deeply bound to my passions-- like writing or knowing plants.  It took a few months but I've given each week a general shape & approach each activity as a practice with the priority being to stay consistent.  & I'm truly grateful for this time & really hope that Kevin's right-- that we can indeed do this!

While at Goddard we took a workshop with one of his favorite professors.  Eva is a historian who gave a general overview towards time devoted to work, historically, in the Western world.  While painting broad brush strokes she offered the sales pitch that modern technology drives convenience & saves time.  Obviously, that idea is beginning to be contested.  She offered some data on the hours most people in the Western world work today & contrasted it with medieval serfs.  Today, most of us work far more hours than medieval serfs.  While medieval serfs were often engaged in back-breaking, exploitative labor, they also had religious holidays throughout the year when all work stopped.  Today, given that smartphones can reach us wherever, whenever, that convenience trumps ideas of health & well-being, & that workaholism is applauded, there is very little real rest.

Therein lies some of my guilt.  I know many people who have to work incredibly strenuously to survive.  Much of my activism is directed towards all of us having health-- access to shelter, food, rest, & some notion of freedom.  I also know people who don't have to work long hours, but do, out of addiction, some deep drive, competition, & because it's generally respected.  People who sacrifice themselves to work are often congratulated as self-less.  Unfortunately, in most employments working in this way will eradicate a sense of self.

A group of friends has begun to gather occasionally & play games in the park.  I was remembering that my grandparents used to play in softball leagues.  Certainly, some of these hobbies still exist but they're far less common.  No one has time.  My grandfather was an engineer-- the guys he played with did all types of work.  Some were mechanics, some were doctors.  They had more sense of community because they had more time to create it, together, after they worked reasonable hours.

They were also fairly multidimensional people.  Some of them specialized, certainly if it helped them offer more in their field, but they often developed hobbies & talents well away from their work lives.  Lawyers played music in bands, welders painted on the weekends.

When I was working more hours pieces of myself had to fall away.  An early, coveted love of writing & the practice of it became filed under, "when I have time."  I had to pay bills, survive, & build a life.  I'm so grateful to still be in that process while also having the time to live it.