The thing about time…
For a long time, and even still in the present, I’ve operated under the pretenses that more is better; More physical exertion, more hours spent working, more time spent working on advancing my career. Now, I’m realizing the areas of my life that remain seemingly untouched by this rhetoric, can no longer stand to be neglected.
It’s never, “more rest,” or “more sleep,”. To grant myself permission to skip a day at the gym, or curl up on the couch in lieu of attending to the multitude of chores that hang in the balance, would be admitting failure. What I’m now realizing is, the only failure is me operating under the belief that I don’t deserve rest. Rest isn’t something we have to earn, it’s an inherent need that must be met whenever our systems tell us, “slow down, friend, I need a minute,”.
The toxicity that permeates our societal constructs of hustle and grind culture has held us prisoner far too long. The power is in our hands to change this narrative, to overthrow the outdated modes of operation that capitalism has us working under. We don’t have to put in 10 hour days, eat our lunch during our fifth meeting of the workday, or watch the world pass us by from the confines of four walls and a sad excuse for an office window.
I’m ridding myself of the self-imposed responsibility of working hard, and instead, working smarter. If I allow myself adequate time to tend to my physical and emotional needs, I find that my work only benefits from it. I can take that day off from the gym, or do a round of deep breathing before bedtime, and nothing suffers as a result.
Time is not money, time is subjective. It is a void of space meant to be filled accordingly. According to what each individual needs at that moment. Time is laughter around the dinner table with old friends; time is the 30 minutes of sweet surrender at your weekly yoga practice.
Time is complex; it’s as boundless as it is finite. One day it feels like there’s not enough of it, the next there’s more than we know what to do with. One thing remains constant: There are no rules you are bound to that tell you how you can spend it, even though we’ve been operating in a world that for so long has told us the opposite.
Spend your minutes, hours, and days doing what you love, what you feel compelled to do. Do this so that you don’t spend months and years resenting what you hadn’t.
It’s not too soon, it’s not too late…
It’s in good time.