I always try to take my own advice and one big piece of advice is “never stop learning.” For me, a key thing to do is read, read, read. I still read lots of books, several a month if I can manage my time better. But I also read a few important blogs that I have stumbled on, usually about life and living well. One of my favorite reads is the quirky Havi Brooks. She’s into ducks (the quack-quack kind) and she writes in a weird sort of prose that takes some getting used to. She often has important things to say, so the other day she was riffing on time and money, something I have written on here before. Take a read from a two-part blog posts on the issue of time and money:
Heading to the bus stop, it suddenly occurred to me that I didn’t have to bus at all. This was a very Island-ey thought, too. It wasn’t: “Oh, taking a cab gets me back to work that much faster!” Nope. I could walk. It might be an hour and a half. Possibly a bit more. But I wasn’t in a hurry. Yeah!
Walking happily in the sun, swinging my water bottle and humming a little hum under my breath, I was transported back to Berlin. To when I lived there. At that time, money was … tight. And I don’t mean that in the casually always-pinched way so many people I know refer to money being tight. It was different than that. Here was my life: an abandoned building in east Berlin. We stepped gingerly over the passed-out junkies in the stairwell. And the needles they left behind. There was no heat in the winter. Well, you could haul up coal to burn from the basement. But in an empty building with no warm neighboring apartments to seal it in, the heat didn’t last. And when you were out of coal, that was it.
So I didn’t have money back then. But what I had — in glorious plentitude — was time. As much as I wanted. And I wanted all of it. I rejoiced in it. This was really and truly the first time in memory that my time was my own. So the idea that I would even consider spending two whole euros on taking the train across the city to get somewhere was preposterous. Two euros?! An actual, visible fraction of my rent. If it took me an hour or two hours or even three hours to get somewhere by foot, what of it? I liked walking. Berlin is a marvelously walkable city (no creepy neighborhoods, no hills, easily-identifiable landmarks everywhere), and I had time. Time was for breathing. Breathing and thinking and making plans.
So here I am, back in Portland, now, walking in the sun. Invoking Island Time. Not a care in the world. No rush and no deadline. And for the first time in the six years since I launched this website and started my company, time was readily available again. I’ve been running this business for six years as of this month. There was definitely a period where my perception was that both time and money were tight and unavailable. But then things basically reversed. Money became more ease-filled while time became more and more scarce. So, somehow at the same time that money and my relationship to actually having it was becoming less restrictive, my relationship with time went the other way. From my perception of time being plentiful and bendy to experiencing it as something limited and rigid. To a relationship that was full of challenge.
It seriously took me six years just to be able to justify stuff like jetting off to a dance class. So I’ve finally gotten to the point where I can make room for a morning dance class. But the time getting there and back? I’ve really resented it. Driving there takes twenty minutes. The bus takes 45. So double that. And that’s where businesswoman me goes into resistance. That’s forty-five minutes times two during which I could be writing copy, brunching a product, teaching a class, solving admin challenges, working on systems, training someone, working with a client.
At some point I realized that I’d unconsciously traded one extreme for another. Anyway, I would like to believe that there is also another place. A situation or an experience where both money and time are equally plentiful. Equally plentiful? Time and money being readily available? Both of them?!?! Not one or the other but both of them. What would that even be like? Except I was wrong. Twice!
I didn’t take the bus home after dance class. I walked in the sun. I smiled at toddlers in sailor hats and stopped to pet some cats. I paused to drink water and breathe. It didn’t take an hour and a half or two hours to reach the Playground, as estimated. It took 47 minutes. Forty seven minutes. Just two minutes longer than by bus. But much more pleasant. But the bigger thing I was wrong about was this: It didn’t matter. Nothing had been lost by not giving that time to my business. Nothing had been lost.