Time is Weird

Been thinking about time recently. Feeling under the gun to get shit done, and trying to cross as many things off my list as possible.

Find freelance work, connect with family and friends, clean out Bento boxes, go to the gym to decompress, be friendly to my in-laws, connect with my wife. Many hats must be worn. And then wonder how it’s already 3:30 p.m, wishing I for more grains in the sandglass timer.

Time is weird. It flexes and changes shape on me, depending on the context and my experience of it.

There’s the time before the sun rises. A slow and spiritual unfolding of the world where you discover there are in fact early birds. I imagine all that chirping is a form of this: “Who else didn’t get eaten by owls last night? Fuck yeah! That you Derek? Shiela? How’s it going over there!?”

There’s vacation time. Days are stretched out like loooooong pasta noodles and late afternoons slip into evenings without anyone noticing. Two days feels like two weeks.

And there’s the last hour before the kids fall asleep. Fifteen minutes takes forever. Getting them into the shower and putting their clothes on is a battle, where it feels like I’m pushing a dead Honda Accord up a steep driveway. I’m exhausted and dehydrated and how is it only six fucking twenty?!

And there’s the loop of lost time. Those shitty days when I obsess about the future or dread outcomes I’m convinced will happen but never actually materialize. I can lose hours in this virtual reality vortex. And I fire a second arrow at myself, frustrated that I’m wasting time thinking about how I’m wasting time.

I’m a person filled with too many hopes and dreams, and I feel paralyzed when thinking about all of them. 

Advice from an expert

One of my fav reads of all time was 4,000 Weeks by self-professed productivity manic Oliver Burkeman. Assuming you make it to a ripe old age of 80, that’s all you got—four thousand weeks of life, spent mostly eating and sleeping?

Scary right? Because there’s a lot I want to do in that span. The thoughts run like a newsticker sometimes: How do I start a business? Will I ever backpack across New Zealand? Will AI eliminate my career in five years? Should I say fuck it and open a sandwich shop with falafel as the hero food item? (Seeking investors…)

One of the core principles Burkeman shares is this truth: You cannot do it all. You can’t and won’t accomplish everything you want in life. You won’t see every country or explore every national park. You can’t be at the yoga thing every week. You can’t meet everyone in Los Angeles. There is not enough time. 

The clock stops for all of us.

And this realization is in itself truly liberating. Eventually, you will turn into human compost. How exciting! Embracing this fact and accepting the finite amount of time I have frees me from the burden of trying to do it all. I let go. I breathe and resume living.

And then I try and keep it simple, as I am stupid.

Prepare something healthy for our children to eat. Sit on rocks. Take time to go outside. Work on a project where my time and effort is critical to overall success. Ride my bike when a car would’ve been more convenient. Take time to go out to lunch with my wife during a busy workweek. Read. Call a friend.

If my intention is sincere and loving, I feel good about those choices. I could have done 100 other things, but instead I chose to do THIS. 

Your choices must be meaningful to you. Whether that’s ecstatic dance or beer distilling or skin care routines or swimming naked in the mountains. 

The decision to take action, any action, is a step forward towards something. And something is better than nothing. On the flipside, meditation, which is in a way focused nothing, is a high-value something.

I think I just upended my entire essay right there. I think this was a reminder for me to go stretch and go to sleep. It’s been a week.

Thanks for reading. I hope you’re enjoying this newsletter so far. Hit reply if you feel inclined. I’m open to writing on most aspects of the human condition. It’s your time, in the end, that I’m entertaining.

Yours,

-Aaron

Three things right now

Read: Waitbutwhy did a post on time

Consider: A Ksafe container?

Listen: My friend Sanjeev has an audio podcast for Binural Dreaming. Get lost in the beats.