On Time

Time is money. Currently, money is necessary for survival. We are taught to hustle, hurry, and generally think of nothing else but to make money. Monetize your favorite hobbies. Always be productive, reach your goals, finish your to-do list, and then reach higher, do more, never rest. Never rest.

Never listen to your body. Drink another energy drink. Never listen to your spirit, because there’s another bill due, there’s unforeseen expenses, because stopping could mean death. Stay in a job you hate or accept horrible working conditions because you can’t afford to take time off to look or make a job and a life you love.

I refuse. I recently learned resilience is not how you make it through hardship, it’s literal rest. It is the time you take to do nothing, to reset, to take care of yourself. I used to think it was a quality with which one made it through, kept going when the going got tough, stiff-upper-lipped it etc. Lies. Resilience is rest, and I refuse to keep up with the hustle anymore. I don’t want to live like that, and I don’t want to work like that.

Any artistic project is like a newborn. Requiring time to gestate, and coming into the world when it is ready, and no sooner, unless under duress. I believe babies choose when they are ready to be birthed into the world. I’ve started to believe in making art like that too. That means releasing any expectation or attachment to the outcome of my work. Capitalism needs timelines and deadlines. I refuse. Commercial music is a well-oiled marketing machine with very little room for delays of any kind. I refuse.

Efficiency in any system sacrifices flow, as in the ability to go with it, to adapt, to adjust, to allow change, to change oneself. There can be no change in a highly efficient system or the system won’t work. As the pandemic has taught us, however, we are not always in charge. We cannot, in fact, control everything or anything because we are just one part of a planetary system that doesn’t agree we are the most important part, superior to all others. We all saw, and continue to see, supply chains interrupted, efficient systems halted with no ability to adapt.

My goal with my process is to respect and honor others’ needs equally with mine. My goal is to allow for rest, for time to adapt and change and evolve. My goal is to let go of the voice telling me to be productive, to stress about my productivity, and that believes I can never do enough. My time on this earth is mine. Your time is yours. We make choices about what to believe once we realize that fact. I choose to believe I can take time to rest, to do nothing, and that will not lead to my imminent demise. What will you believe? How will you take time?