Mysterious time

[vaneramos]

We talk about time management as if it could be managed. Really we can only manage ourselves. Time does what it wants, always the same thing: an inexorable drama drawing us into vortices of life, love and death. Moons and planets revolve. Great lights flicker. People respond like automatons, repeating the same movements over and over. Or they break free, fluttering like moths lost in the glare.

Philosophers argue over whether time is a constant, or fluid. Whether our perceptions can shape it.

My recent experiment in self-management has changed my perception of time. Am I manipulating it like clay, or is time the one toying with me? One morning, waking up breathless and trembling, I charge urgently through my list of commitments. Another day the tasks complete themselves with little effort, and I discover a free hour opening unexpectedly like a crocus in February. (So what do I do, sit and admire it? Hmm, maybe I'll knit.) Some things work, others don't. Wednesday afternoon my mind rebelled and refused to co-operate, shutting down, slacking off for three hours, but otherwise I've followed the agenda pretty well. Fortunately my calendar is unlike time, susceptible to adaptation and revision.

I'm having trouble getting around to the job hunt. That's because, at a deeply stubborn level, I don't want to do it. How do I solve this? Maybe lock myself in a room with nothing but a phone and list of prospects. I have a shortage of rooms.

After one week, and four two-hour segments of working on the novel, I've written one thousand words. At this rate it will take eighty weeks or more. I have to write faster—wrong, I have to stick to my plan: no word quotas. Do I trust myself to stick with a project for so long? I'd like to allot more time, but two hours a day is the most I can spare for now.

Yesterday morning I stewed elderberries to make juice, and baked the rest of them into muffins. This morning I used the juice to make elderberry jelly.

Self-management seems to swell the hours in a day. Linear time bursts like buds on a branch. In contrast the days themselves get squashed together; a week speeds by. Life flows through my fingers like water, but I feel less panic-stricken. I'm mixing my metaphors, because time is a sneaky shapeshifter.