What even is time anymore.
I had a stray thought last night that it had been a couple of weeks since I’d updated the blog and it was probably time. I checked my blog and saw that the last post was on April 8 and I had a little baby crisis of time – holy shit it had been almost a month! It was longer than I thought! I had better get on this. I resolved to make a post the next day when I woke up, and went to sleep. Now that I’ve opened up my blog to post a little something, I’m actually awake enough to do the math and realize it had been only 12 days. Hardly a month. Calm down, past me. We’re fine.
I have absolutely no concept of time anymore, apparently.
To be honest? I started losing it when I was officially unemployed. Whilst working, it was a key part of my job to be keenly aware of what day it was, what week it was and how it relates to the rest of the workweeks, what financial quarter we were in, even. After little time away from my job, the days kind of started to blend together. It does that when you’re unemployed. The days of the week are the first thing to cease meaning anything. Or more precisely, weekends are the first concept to go. Everyone else is celebrating because it’s finally Saturday and you’re here thinking… Yeah okay, and? The days of the week all blur together eventually. And then the months. There is no clear delineation anymore between the months of the year. January? That was like a week ago wasn’t it?
Quarantine, of course, has brought the entire world to that level. Except for the “essential workers” being martyred on the altar of capitalism, a lot of us simply don’t know what time it is anymore.
And let me tell you, that is a really weird way to live when you know for a fact your time on earth is limited. “Hurry up and wait” has taken on such a different meaning. As I touched on in previous posts, there’s a part of me that feels very much like I am wasting precious time by sitting here and doing nothing. And there is that part of me that thinks if I had a complete choice in the matter, sitting in bed petting my cat and playing on the Internet is pretty much what I’d be choosing to do anyway. So imagine that… with an underpinning of urgency. There are things I really need to have done, and soon, and they’re not getting done. Now, when I have all the time in the world until I suddenly don’t. I have a will to file. I have an inventory of all of my belongings to document and set up for disposition for after my death. Holy FUCK do I have a lot of belongings. I’ve been trying to buy a house for the last five years – I should probably be starting to think about packing up. (Moving. Yeah, that’s its own post.)
Of course I need to be a little kind to myself, and realize that my capability is limited. I’m not who I used to be, I can’t just get on a tangent and sort and refile all of my paperwork in an afternoon like I used to. I can’t just decide to reoragnize and pare down my cosmetics. I have the time, I just don’t have the ability anymore. Unfortunately, I do still have that inclination. And so many afternoons I sit here in bed looking around and thinking about all of the things that need to be doing that I could do if only my hands worked. It’s not like I’m being lazy and not getting things done, I just don’t have the capability to do them myself.
I also need to give myself a little bit of shit; because while it’s true that I cannot do these things myself, I have a whole lot of friends who would happily come over and help me do exactly those things. Friends who would happily hang out with me for little while and put my stickers into albums for me while we chit chat about everything and nothing. I had a friend come by and completely clean out and reorganize my pantry for me, therefore I know these people are available and willing, I just need to ask. And I am so very bad at asking.
Obviously right now quarantine doesn’t make asking for help possible. So I have the inclination, but not the ability, and not even the ability to call for help. My only possibility is to sit here, and feel time slipping away from me while none of this gets done. I have so much to do, and so much time to do it in, and I just can’t. Time and I have a very complicated relationship right now. Someday, sooner than I’d like to think, time will run out. And there’s nothing I can do about that. There will definitely be many things left undone. I am guaranteed to not have as much time as I think, much less as much time as I want.
So in the meantime, I spend my too much/not enough time petting my cats, and playing on the internets, and stressing about everything I still have to do. I think right now with quarantine, a lot of people are feeling some version of this. And we all need to be a little gentle with ourselves right now. A little forgiving. A little softer. Not all of it’s going to get done and were going to have to be okay with that. We are all in trauma response mode right now, and for me there’s a weird sort of calm that comes with this disaster pandemic. I feel like the playing field is little more even between the world and me. Like, a lot of people understand where I’m coming from now that simply didn’t have that capacity earlier. And we all sit, and wait, and feel like we should be doing something with our time and not doing that thing and feeling incredibly guilty for it when really? We shall be congratulating ourselves for just existing right now. Things are hard. Time is its own thing, and it’s going to do whatever the hell it wants to.
I hope regardless of what’s happening in your too much/not enough time, you’re being safe and being kind to yourselves. And patient with each other.
Much love, from 6 feet away.