permission to reclaim our time

it's not just about rest

pictured above: playing through a channeled art making session out on the headwaters reserve trail, humboldt county, northern ca

Holy eclipse season! Hope y’all been surviving out there! I found myself being acutely reminded of how this time can bring up old issues and lessons we still need to fully integrate last week when I found myself (somewhat) inexplicably COMPLETELY WIPED OUT.

TBH, it was a bit frightening, as the only time I’ve felt so drained was when I got COVID a few years ago and was entirely depleted of my energy (something that has never fully recovered, sadly). It was so similar that I even took a test (it was negative), despite my intuitive knowing that this was no virus wringing my energy from me. Indeed it was more simple than that: I had just been doing too much.

And while this past week really did force me to rest, much more came up than just that simple directive—which, tbh, drives me a bit bonkers when I’m told to do so. Because for me, and how I channel energy, “rest” isn’t always the answer. Sometimes, I just need a break—a walk with the dog, some time working in the garden, a change of scenery, a chat with a friend.

And so last week required the dreaded (for me) rest, sprinkled with other supportive activities that helped replenish my energetic stores: reading in the sunshine, playing around with creating art (for the first time in months and it’s been MAGICAL! Much gratitude to

Zaneta

for their monthly Art Witch Support Circle for rekindling that journey!), going for (shortish) hikes.

I consistently found that I didn’t have an ounce of productive energy after finishing up the work tasks I HAD to do for the week, and despite knowing this—and that I was so drained due to the fact that I had put SO much into my work (and, radical honesty, play) the past few weeks—I still felt plagued by anxiety around not doing enough.

This experience, of suddenly finding myself so completely drained I had nothing to fuel my engine, reminded me of the extreme importance of heeding my energetic flow while being aware of how much tasks take from it. It also had me thinking about the ways in which the overculture controls and shapes our experience of time, i.e. our very lives.

Even having moved out of the 98-5 (who are we kidding) M-F office gig schedule years ago, and working for myself (and thus setting my own schedule) for the past year, I still continue to catch myself holding on to this notion that such a schedule is the right one, that it indicates “hard work” and thus will generate “success.”

This conditioning lingers despite knowing that I cannot, after years of trying, function in such a way, and in knowing that the 8 hour work day in itself is utter bullshit, with studies showing that, on average, a person working an 8 hour office job does maybe 4 hours of actual “productive” work.

But it’s so much more than just keeping certain hours. It’s also in how the rest of our time/lives revolve around those “work hours” (negating, of course, all of the many life/caretaking tasks we must do outside of said hours just to survive). “Working for the weekend,” is a phrase that haunts me, in its notion that we are supposed to be miserable for five days just to cram our “life” into two.

I’ve been thinking about how inane it is, that within the context of these jobs, they may provide such delicious benefits like “PTO” and “paid vacation.”* At the same time, I regularly hear from people in such positions how such time is “never enough” for their particular circumstances, or how in many ways, such things are never able to be cashed in as there is too much work, or no one to cover whatever it is they are bringing to the table (how dare one’s work stop for three days!). And of course, many folks work their entire lives without such “benefits.”

And, whether or not you are granted PTO, one must still put in a “request” to use those hours (paid or not) in order to take time off, to have a vacation, to tend to a loved one, and to have anything outside of those precious two days a week to live your life.

Ayana Zaire Cotton

blew my mind in a recent For the Worldbuilders podcast ep (see below for more on this!), with the simple statement that “free time” is not something we should have to earn.

RIGHT?!

The past few months have also made me much more aware of how the stamp of time isn’t always the best indicator of how much I put into something and how much energy is being used. This, of course, flies right in the face of an hourly wage, which construes time worked with the amount of money you make (and thus, how “hard” you have worked and how much that work is “worth”). And while I do charge an hourly rate for my client work (simply because that tends to be the easiest way to track such things), I also know when I’m in a flow state deep in a project, the amount of energy and focus I am putting into something is not necessarily reflected in the amount of time I spend on something.

This is related to the conditioning around the 8 hour work day because I could get super into a project, channeling everything into it and coming up with something amazing to, upon coming out of the work haze delirium, find that I clocked all of two hours in doing so. The channeling of energy was such, though, that anything else I attempt to work on (and trust me, I have) will just be complete garbage.

On paper, it looks like I’m a lazy piece of shit. After all, I only worked TWO HOURS!** And yet, I did some AMAZING FUCKING WORK IN THOSE TWO HOURS. And, pushing myself to do more, just for the sake of filling six more hours, would result in nothing other than a bunch of work I’d need to redo anyway, and likely a migraine.

And thus, I’m continuing my own journey of discovering how to actually structure and reclaim my time in a way that honors my inherent energy, minimizing the sickness and harm conditioned by the world I’ve lived and worked in for the last 42 years.

You might be reading this and being like “of course, that would be amazing to work on my psychological and practical approach to time and work! But I am stuck at my job that I need to pay for my kid’s day care/mom’s housing/student debt/[fill in your particular need] and I don’t get the option to ‘flex my time’ or take breaks when I want.”

I’m fully aware that your circumstances may be much different than my own of being self employed. What I share here is offered for you to apply in whatever way aligns with your own sovereignty, and situation. At the same time, I also want to offer the gentle reminder that nothing in our lives and the world can change if we accept what we are told is the only way to be.

There is so much we can do with our time and energy—and it only benefits those at the very top when we needlessly drain it and beat ourselves up in the process. So whether you’d like permission to just zone out with a good read after the kids go to bed (or just go to bed yourself), or you need encouragement to allow yourself the morning to take a walk before jumping on your daily zoom calls, please take it! Know that you deserve to enjoy your life and that you are not here to be a robot, a human doing, but a human BEING!

suggested podcasts for exploring how to expand and take back our notion of time

• The aforementioned For the Worldbuilders podcast episode “Permission to Pivot: The Transition from 3 Offers Back to 1” from

  Ayana Zaire Cotton
  has so much juiciness in regards to taking control over your work and time!

• In the Unpublished podcast episode “How to Deal with a Slump” Amie McNee and James Winestock discuss how we are told to never stop working/that we will “fail” if we do so because it is in the best interest of cultural gatekeepers for us to unceasingly generate content (amongst other things).

• LOVE the reframe offered in

  amelia hruby
  ’s Off the Grid podcast ep “Sacred Labor, Small Business & Anti-capitalism” featuring Megan Leatherman around how reclaiming our time/work doesn’t just happen through rest, but rather in going at the flow of our energy at the time (this spoke STRONGLY to me given my aforementioned aversion to being told to “just rest”).

• In the first ep of season two of Grounding Visions “Cut Back on the Busy Work!,” I share practical tips on reclaiming your energy and time when it comes to marketing your work. (Be sure to subscribe on Apple podcasts or Spotify to hear an upcoming episode related to this topic of honoring our agency in our marketing!)

*I name this fully aware of the fact that there is a massive class and privilege issue inherent in even having a regular 8-5 M-F gig in which one gets things like PTO. Personally, I’ve worked many jobs that don’t match this category, which speaks to just how strong the cultural norm for someone of my upbringing (upper-middle class white midwestern) is. I don’t think it is a stretch, however, to name it as the “mainstream representation of work,” which is then layered on top of the personal conditioning I grew up in.

**Also worth noting the complex classism and cultural narrative inherent in the notion of more time working = better, as the further up the wealth chain you get, the more working less is actually seen as being “smarter”/”better”***

***A recommended thought exercise in exploring the double standard inherent in classism is asking the question “what is ‘classy’ if you are rich and ‘trashy’ if you’re poor?” (examples: drugs, not paying attention to your kids, not having a job, or, my personal favorite, biking on the highway)

book club tomorrow, wednesday, oct. 16!

let’s get into i love dick by chris kraus

This month’s book club, an exploration of the fabulous I Love Dick by Chris Kraus takes place TOMORROW, Wednesday, Oct. 16 from 6-7 pm pst!

To be part of the convo, join the club with the zoom link below on Oct. 16!

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/86441886404?pwd=EIFvShk8z0BxvE1XNdCnkRzZvxBpfW.1

Thanks for taking these thoughts in and happy full moon on Thursday! May you howl at/with her if you feel so inclined!

xo,

Holly