The Baboon Congress

Preambling Through Time

79 Comments

Today’s guest post comes from Anna.

Time.

We never seem to have enough of it and it goes by too quickly. There aren’t enough hours in the day, days in the week, months in the year. Pick your favorite saw or cliché about time, and insert it .

A few weeks back I found myself doing something I never thought possible – creating time. This year’s election had me fired up enough that I felt I had to put my ideals into actions, time or no time. I knew this would mean giving my precious time as a gift in the hopes that I could defeat my foe. I found an organization working for the same goal and signed up for volunteer shifts. The shifts were three hours each – a large chunk out of anyone’s day, given the pulls and pushes of modern life. After working a few shifts I cajoled the staff into finding tasks I could do from home a little each day instead of going into the office for a scheduled shift. I could find an hour or so each day much more easily than 3 hours at a crack once a week; it became even easier when I found I could break that hour out into 2 or 3 smaller chunks of time in my day.

One evening, as I was doing my volunteer tasks, Husband told me about an article he was reading regarding our investment, as a culture, in being busy. We have created the construct of “not enough time” as a thing oddly valued and being “busy” as a status symbol (both tied to our need to feel “important”). The article went on to talk about ways to break out of the “too busy” trap. Along with just plain-old not over-scheduling or creating “busy-ness,” the article encouraged you to think in smaller increments of time for activities which can be slid into your day more easily.

Well shoot, that’s what I had done all on my own. With a bit of chronological alchemy, I created time.

Having thrown of the Shackles of Busy-ness, I propose the following Declaration of Time Independence:

When in the Course of Human Events, it becomes necessary for One People to dissolve the Chronological Bands which have connected them with another, and to Assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal hours to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s Clock entitle them, a Decent Respect to the Schedules of Mankind requires that they should declare the Time Allowances which impel them to Disengagement.

We hold these chronologies to be time-evident, that all days are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable increments, that among these are Quiescence, Calmness and the pursuit of Laziness.

That to secure these breathers, clocks are ignored among People, deriving their just hours from the consent of the scheduled, That whenever any Form of Time becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Schedules, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its appointments in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Idleness and Happiness. Leisure, indeed, will dictate that Agendas long established should well be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to Schedule, while Calendars are Sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the timetables to which they are accustomed. But when a long day of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Busy-ness evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Over-Schedule-ism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Agenda, and to provide new Calendars for their future tranquility.

What might you declare your independence from, if you could?

79 thoughts on “Preambling Through Time”

  1. Cleaver, Anna.
    In the larger picture there are several aspects of the larger cultures of which I am a part (meaning the USA, or perhaps humankind itself) of which I would wish to be free. I have decided that to be free of certain elements I dislike, I would have to be free of the cultures themselves, which is a step I am not prepared to take for the positives I gain by membership in those cultures. The same is true of smaller cultures of which I am a part, such as my church, or at the smallest level my family. But tim’s Thanksgiving Day question reminded of just how few cultures (groups of any sort) of which I am a part simply to give myself some of the freedoms I have chosen to obtain.
    Life is a balance. I am freer and thus more isolated that most. Much of this freedom I have chosen in a desire to be free of my pain, but that is far from the only reason.

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    1. Very insightful. You are right. Be careful what you wish for. It all interconnected. Like the old saying about democracy. The worst form of government there is… Except for all the others

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    2. Dik and Sharon Thompson, who were the lead farmers in a project I managed, usually ended their presentations with a slide listing things in farming and other aspects of life that they thought needed to be kept in balance.

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  2. Anna, your way of dealing with the volunteering issue is perfect. Good for you. I had to tell the organizers I didn’t have the 4 hour chunks they were looking for and that if the time was available I would just show up. You solved the problem. Good for you. I enjoyed the typo in the opening sentence. Insert your favorite saw. I think tha could be then answer. Insert your favorite therapy into your Life and saw what happens. Felling overwhelmed… Go work in the shop… Don’t know what to do next… Pull out the paints and get to work on the canvas. Need to figure something out…make a pie…fix your problems….go fly fishing….. Or ….acknowledge their is an issue and deal with it the same way you eat an elephant, one bite at a time.
    What would I like to declare independence from? Dependence. It’s that damn dependence that gets you every time. If you are in control you are set. If it is you are toast.
    My batteries are gone so I’ll post recharge and be back. Happy saturday

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  3. Good morning. Nicely done, Anna. I would like to declare independence from responsibility. I do want to be a responsible person. As I think you did with time, Anna, I would just be more selective about being responsible. I have been told that I will not have to try too hard to free myself of some responsibilities because I already seem to do a good job of not always being highly responsible.

    I have a trick that I use when I am over come by trying to fulfill my responsibilities. I just go ahead and do something that I like to do instead doing what I should do. For example, when I was in school and should have been studying for exams, I would read a good novel or mystery instead of studying. Now, when I think I should be getting things done around the house, I sometimes sit down and watch TV before finally getting started on the things that need attention.

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    1. Keeps you sain but the house looks like crap. Can’t have your cake and eat it too? That’s my goal.
      Last night I had to deal with my Volkswagen headlight . It’s a doody of an installation process, you Germans…… Well it was so frustrating because it is not open for discussion. There is only one way to do it and it wouldn’t go. I worked it. Left and chanted my mantra while polishing off another job jar item and came back at it, failed again went off to get another mantra chanting task dunnnnnnnnn. Fifth time the headlight popped right in. I will not be taking it out to discover why it went in the fifth time and I may pay the guy next time to replace the bulb for me…. but I doubt it

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      1. I am at the point of leaving auto repair to others. I never did do much auto repair so I am not giving up very much by not doing that. I still try to do plumbing and I almost always end up with multiple tries before I am done. As I might have said here before, I do make sure that I do my plumbing when the hardware store is open because I usually need to make at least a couple of trips to that store before I finish the repair.

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  4. Good concept, Anna.

    Although I’ve been called a good writer by various people at various times, I am not. But I might (on a good day) be a good editor of what I have written. That is, I can sometimes go back to something I wrote and discover its main flaws and then fix them. The prose in the book I wrote about my parents has been intensively edited about twenty times, and in that process I discovered all kinds of ugly, confusing, boring material. Although things I write are almost always stupid and banal, after enough editing some of them became more interesting and readable.

    What I would choose to declare independence from is the irreversible nature of time. I badly need to edit my life just as I need to edit the things I write. Now that I am old and have time to reflect on things, I cannot help thinking about the mistakes I’ve made. Things I said that should never have been said. Things not said that should have been. Girls I kissed when I should have been kissing other girls. Punishing my dogs for misbehavior when I should have been punishing myself for poor training and confusing directions. All the ways I wasted that most precious of gifts: time. All those other mistakes that shame me so much I cannot bear to name them here.

    Are we expected to come up with an appropriate cliche? “Time is a river.” And rivers, dammit, flow only one way. The one thing I want most to edit is the one thing that can never be edited: my life.

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    1. I don’t know if I have come to grips with my past mistakes. There certainly are plenty of things I wish I had done differently or not at all. Still, I am beginning to think that what I did was okay because I could have gone much farther down a wrong path. Some people who, it seemed to me, did better than I did, don’t seem to be very happy as far as I can tell. I think you still seem to be enjoying life, Steve, which indicates to me that you don’t need to worry too much about your past.

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    2. Like that river if you go back and try to edit and re edit you end up exhausted from swimming back against the current and after 20 tries its still not right. Try writing the next thing and getting a kick out if what you see along the way. Edit along the way, trust the force Luke and you will see what a wonderful Stewart of the river you have become. You can feel bad about not doing it right but in reality you do an excellent version of you everyday.

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    3. I always enjoy your writing, Steve, and I think you are perhaps being too hard on yourself. You are able to paint pictures and tug at the tethers of hearts with your keyboard and your honest perceptions.

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  5. Lovey story, Anna. I would love to declare independence from work deadlines (Intake reports and narrative summaries and diagnoses within 5 days treatment plan presented at multidisciplinary team no later than 20 working days after admission, complete psychological evaluations within 30 days, case notes done within 24 yours) I am evaluated on timeliness, not of work quality. I resent that. Today, however, I am on a self imposed schedule as we are having Thanksgiving dinner tonight and we have lots to do by 7 when our guests arrive.

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  6. I think because I live with a man who constantly feels that he is battling time, behind on whatever tasks he has chosen for himself, doesn’t have enough time, wishes there were more hours in the day, etc., etc., I mostly want to be free of the constraints of time. I get weary listening to the pretty much daily discussion of how time done my beau wrong today – actually, I’ve learned that it is part and parcel of how he frames his world and listen to it differently than i used to (he needs a regular schedule and an agenda for each day as he has a bit of ADD – easily distracted but also easy to get hyper-focused on a single task and lose track of time and the rest of the world – if he doesn’t get everything done on his mental agenda, then it throws him out of whack…if I remind him that it was only his agenda, not mine or anyone else’s, he can sometimes derail is “time” train…).

    I would also declare my independence from weight gain if only I could – my genetic background paired with a strong desire for cheese, desserts and other high-calorie goodies make that one difficult. Using the strategy I used to find volunteer time, though, I have been able to squeeze in a bit more walking during my work day – fingers crossed that it will help at least some during these coming weeks of Holiday Treats A Go-Go.

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    1. When I was in my Match.com days, two of the women I dated were similar in their obsession with time. I’m reminded of them, Anna, by your description of your guy. These women routinely scheduled themselves to accomplish thirteen things in the time it takes to do ten. Then they’d beat themselves up for being slackers who never did what they set out to do. It amazed me that they kept being surprised by falling short of their planned work, when any fool could have seen that they never scheduled enough time to do the work. But that was a simplistic answer to their problem, and I wasn’t thanked for pointing out that the real issue was not laziness but unrealistic plans. I finally realized that it was more important or more pleasing to them to hate themselves for falling short than it would have been to make sensible plans and succeed with them.

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    2. I love that my quote about suffering evils while evils are sufferable hath shewn up in your preamble today. Great minds….
      It is so easy to see other peoples messed up perspectives on how to deal with life and do difficult to get to the business of improving ourselves, I have mentioned. BEn franklins 13 virtues before. It is something I work with to remind me how far I have to go but ho much. Etter I am thz. I was last time this topic was up on top of the list. Onward ever onward it never is done. I’d like to know dust on earth we would have to work on if we finally got ourselves right. For you think mother Theresa thought she had it right. Martin Luther king ? Ghandi? Dahli lama? Keep at it, what else can we do?

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      1. Bens 13

        Temperance: Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation
        Silence: Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversations
        Order: Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time
        Resolution: Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve
        Frugality: Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; that is, waste nothing
        Industry: Lose not time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions
        Sincerity: Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly; speak accordingly
        Justice: Wrong none by doing injuries or omitting the benefits that are your duty
        Moderation: Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think you deserve
        Cleanliness: Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes or habitation
        Tranquility: Be not disturbed at trifles or accidents common or unavoidable
        Chastity: Rarely use venery but for health or offspring; never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation
        Humility: Imitate Jesus and Socrates

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  7. Good chewy post today, Anna. The kind that is prompting good, chewy comments.

    This fall, the s&h and I said a final farewell to our 107-year-old friend from church. Her granddaughter shared her memories of growing up with this amazing woman, and I am still chewing on this quote, “if there is something you want to do in your life, do it now, because it all goes so fast”. Pretty amazing thought from someone who lived what most of us would consider a very long life indeed.

    I think I would like to declare my independence from self-criticism. Now that sounds like it should be easy enough, since it is something I do to myself, but like Anna’s weight gain, I suspect there might be a genetic component.

    I sometimes think a lot of my time management issues would go away, if only I didn’t second guess myself so much (well, that, and putting the keys and glasses in a consistent place…..)

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    1. i think the contraption that would make them get sucked back to that one spot everytime you put them down would be valuable until you realized that if only you would keep track you wouldnt have to keep walking back to that same spot 20 times a day

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      1. hint: My self-criticism is always done in my mother’s voice. One does NOT tell my mother to “shut up” (that particular phrase was considered swearing in my upbringing).

        It is a funny thing about all of those things I was brought up with that make up that list of “things one does not do”. It wasn’t like there were rules or virtues associated with them, they were simply things one did not do. They were never spoken of or even alluded to, you just knew, “one does not do/say that”. I rather suspect it is something like what happens in cultures that “shun”. One’s bad behavior simply does not exist. It is not an option.

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        1. Funny what we let inner voices get away with. Tough to walk away from those inner voices too. If you can’t tell you to shut up can you put in a request to be nice?

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        2. Most of us, I think, have the critical voice of a father or mother permanently recorded in our minds. Those of us who marry the wrong person usually get to replace mother or father in that way with the voice of an angry or disgusted spouse. People who have been divorced for decades will often have that voice in their heads, as strong as ever, commenting on their behavior.

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        4. As my friend, Mike Mikkelsen, says (34 years into his fourth marriage!): “You just keep trying till you find one that sticks.”

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  8. Wonderful post, Anna – beyond cleaver! How did you find the time to write it?

    I would like to declare my independence from other people’s opinions of me. I don’t like to disappoint people, but I’m probably not going to measure up to their standards in my lifetime.

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    3. My larger problem in this psychoarena is memories of my failure to meet my own standards.
      But there are those days when the pain drives me right into myself and into the dark and quiet, which is where I am going for the next hours.

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      2. It is amazing to me how much feeling like crap affects how you are able to enjoy and participate in the world. You seem to know how make the most out of your functional hours. Congrats

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  9. Time is only a concept around which we organize our lives. It doesn’t really “exist”. People who have far too much to do say they have too little of “it”; people with too little to occupy themselves have too much of “it” or berate themselves for not making better use of “it”. I fall into the latter category. I find that having the luxury of setting my own agenda and rarely having to be accountable to anyone or anything besides myself both pleases me and makes me pretty slothful.

    Using the concept of time does have me fussing about being 80 in just twelve years, most especially when thinking about how rapidly the years have flown by. Until I turned 60, thoughts like this one never occurred to me. We’re the only animal on earth shackled with consciousness of the past or the future. Most of the “time”, I’m graced with acceptance and view “time” as nothing other than one moment leading to another moment quite contentedly. Last week end, I had the joy of hearing/viewing a high school classmate’s slide presentation on how we don’t see a fraction of what we’re looking at. This friend is a world renowned photographer whose brilliance, creativity, and passion have her so engaged in each moment that her visual art productions tap into the collective consciousness. Her gift is completely lacking in self-consciousness or hubris and has lead her around the globe capturing the most famous people alive, the story of wounded animals, and the lifestyles of so many other cultures. What Judy’s done with the time available to her amazes and humbles me. And, it resulted in some self-deprecation – the kind in which contrasting what a like-aged friend’s use of “time” to my use of “it” brings me up pathetically short.

    My son dropped in for an unannounced, rare visit recently. I hadn’t vacuumed since Labor Day because if I don’t have company, I see little reason to bother. It’s one of those things I tend to put off indefinitely since the abundance of open-ended time allows me to do practically any chore the next day. Or the next. My cats had recently dragged in birds who had killed themselves crashing into windows, whereupon they de-feathered them in the living room, leaving feathers everywhere. When my son surveyed the room, he said, “Mom – I’m kinda worried about you. A dirty house reflects your state of mind, after all”. He then pulled out the vacuum and began vigorously going over the large shag rug for ten minutes. I assured him that I’m not depressed or unhappy in the least, but merely terribly lazy since I always have time the next day or week to get stuff done. This incident embarrassed me a bit as well as reminded me that how well I take care of myself frees my kids of worrying about me. It also tapped into my shame for not using my time like my photographer friend, Judy.

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    1. Time is an interesting construct. We each have the exact same amount of it available in any given hour, or on any given day, yet how we cumulatively spend it, day after day, year after year, is what ultimately sets us apart. I sometimes ponder if I would have spent my time differently, doing different things, if I had one burning passion or one extraordinary gift. Is it my lack of any such extraordinary gift or talent that has resulted in me haphazardly changing course so many times in my life, or is it simply lack of discipline? Guess I’ll never know.

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    2. I have been realizing lately that my daughters have started to be aware that they have “older” parents, (hey, not THAT old!) and sometimes if I am not careful what I say I realize they are looking at me (or each other) in a worried sort of way. On the other hand, I have sort of started to worry a little about myself. My mom died at 67, and I have just three and a half more years before I reach that age. I would like to pass that mile post in good health, but if I spend too much time worrying about it I won’t be healthy when I get there… I can go in circles in my mind for a long time!
      My parents were extremely productive people when they were alive, sort of like your friend! There is some sense, in which (if I let myself think about it) I will never live up to my expectation of myself based on my imagined lives of my parents. I am not productive every minute, but in my rational moments I think that is okay.

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    3. Cb I love the Leo buscaflia story about his mom going back to get her college degree at an older age, hen it was pointed out that by the time she graduates she would be 75 years old. She said that’s ok I am going to be 75 that year anyhow.
      One of my favorite sayings from back in motivational trainiNg days was …dust keeps
      Do he important stuff the little stuff that you feel like you need to do will always be there.

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  10. Thoughtful post Anna – that must have been fun re-doing the Other Declaration… 🙂

    I’d like to declare independence from the SHOULDS. They are largely self-imposed, but have their source in the upbringing and socialization that many of us experienced growing up. I just never feel like I’ve done enough for… my mom, my family, my house and garden, my community… my iinner voice frequently berates me, but once in a while I rebel and tell her to shut up. Reminds me of when self-employed baboons say what a b**** it is to work for that boss.

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    1. You remind me of one of my fellow kindergarten moms, back in the day.

      Her phrase for this sort of thing was “don’t should yourself”. I still use this (mind you, only for other people, not for myself 🙂 ).

      Methinks we are an overly responsible group of Midwesterners here (except tim, of course).

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    2. It was quite fun re-writing part of the Other Declaration – an interesting challenge to find words that fit the meter and tone (especially with such wonderful phrases as “hath shewn” in there).

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  11. Afternoon–

    Man, I lived by the clock for most of my previous life. It was ‘time’ to get up, ‘Time’ to do chores, ‘time’ to milk cows, ‘time’ for fieldwork, ‘time’ to do it all over again. The suntan around my wrist watch proved that.
    I knew I was on vacation if I took my watch off– once I got over the heebe jeebies of not having it on.
    I’ve always been fascinated by time too. Started a blog here once about time but it morphed into some other subject. Just a couple weeks ago heard a story on ‘RadioLab’ about how it was the trains that got all the clocks coordinated in town.

    No one every accused me of being a workaholic; I can squander away hours putzing. But at the same time, if I’m in a job it’s hard to quit before it’s done. I certainly may procrastinate getting to it, but once I do just let me finish it. Unless it’s boring… then we’re back to putzing.
    Kelly and I were laughing the other day; we want to be nightowls… but our jobs / kids / school doesn’t respect that.

    I really should use my time more wisely. Among other things I wouldn’t have this bag of receipts to sort through for my tax planning meeting next week.
    Oh look! A red squirrel!

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      1. It does, tim. It does.
        On the other hand, I’ve been doing bookwork for a couple hours straight now. Making progress. And it got too dark to see the squirrel anymore.
        Regarding time:
        When I first sold the milk cows I felt like I had all the time in the world. I’d take the kids to school at 7:30 in the morning and I was FREE for the rest of the day! I remember one day went to Brueggers for a bagel, got license tabs for the car, went to Barnes and Noble, went to Best Buy and when I got home it was only 10:30AM!
        A few more things on the schedule these days, but I’m not tied to that milking schedule and that is amazingly liberating.
        The month I tried milking three times / day; that was tough. Milked at midnight, 8:00 AM and 4:00 PM. It would be OK if I had no other life.
        Garrison Keillor once said “Having a herd of cows is not the same as having a social life”. He sure got that right.

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        2. I was fortunate enough to get some good conversations with my dairy farmer grandfather (son of the lady in my gravatar) before he died. Prior to that, I always kind of thought he was a lot like the farmer in American Gothic (yes, I know that man was actually a doctor-grew up near Stone City).

          He once told me that he quickly figured out that if you milked the cows very early in the morning, you could do the second milking early enough and be done, and still go out at night.

          It tickled me to find out that was something he would consider important

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  12. Greetings! I would like to declare my independence from judgement and criticism — mainly of myself, but others as well. While I may not express it out loud or to others, my mind spews a constant stream of self-judgement and self-criticism. Then when I’ve had enough, I’ll start nit-picking on other people in my mind, just to make myself feel better or superior.

    I’d like to think I’ve let go of most of it by now, but any stress or perceived competition (for jobs, attention, etc.) and I easily fall back into this habit. And then the guilt creeps in, thanks to my Catholic upbringing. A lot of cultural norms feed into this as well. Being busy, organized and efficient means you’r’e probably financially successful — which seems to be a must in order to survive in our economy

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    1. Yes, I would also like to declare independence from being too judgmental. Joanne. I do like to do the best I can without beating myself up too much. It is hard to strike a balance between trying to meet reasonable expectations for myself and becoming overly critical of myself. It certainly doesn’t help to live at a time when having a lot of money and getting ahead of others seems to be so important to many people.

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  13. It has taken me much of the day to catch up with all of the great blog posts since Thanksgiving. Thank you to all the guest bloggers – all of you have done such a great job! I’m sorry to have missed so much. I’m so glad mig is back with us! Now if only BiB would come back!

    Of course I’d like to declare my independence from work but it’s impossible, so I’ll just let that one go.

    Quite a few of us have said they’d like to declare their independence from “shoulds” and judgment and opinions, whether internal or external. I’m one of those. I suffer from those little niggling doubts about myself such as, “I should get more done in a day,” or “I should have finished my degree,” or “I should be a singer/songwriter,” or “I feel strongly about this cause so I should volunteer all of these hours while my family and home are neglected.” In my case, much of it comes from upbringing and genetics. My father was very driven, very disappointed in himself, and died two months after his 60th birthday. My mom is much like mig’s description of her mother. I would never tell her to shut up and her voice is often in my head. I’m also a Meyers-Briggs INFP – extremely perceptive – and I can pick up on negative feelings immediately. It’s like having constant radar. It keeps me evaluating myself constantly and that’s not always a healthy thing to do. It would be a very good thing to declare independence from the critical inner voice and from the expectations of others, especially family.

    I’m thankful for all of you. I’m so grateful that I can write these things and you will read them and it will still be okay.

    Anybody else listening to Aoife O’Donovan on PHC?

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    2. I am an I/ENFP as well — being the I or the E depends on the day, situation, my mood, who I’m with, etc. I am curious as to how many other dear baboons fit this rare category.

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    1. Thank you Krista. Love Pink Lloyd
      I once knew a guy named Lloyd. He dyed his hair — (I don’t think his intention was to make it pink-ish) — and we called him ‘Pink Lloyd’ for a while.

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    3. Thanks. There is nothing to say. If I had had more than an hour of sleep, I would have had the forbearance not to post.
      We did not go to ER for lupus as such but there was the fear of what lupus would do to the problem. The problem I will not explain. When we go there, they always look up her records and are overwhelmed by her 23 prescriptions and what they dare do and not do. She is sitting in the living room reading; her normal self in a much weaker version. (Why in the name of good and evil is it “living room” and “livingroom”?)
      I will be managing sleep and keeping up with things more than posting for a day or more.. I was having some fun in the last few days. If you want to know on what click on this.:
      http://beneathaquiltedsky.wordpress.com/
      There is content on the “ABOUT” button too.

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      3. Anna, I only recently acquired that picture. I now have only three pictures of me under the age of 5. I am afraid that was a common facial expression in my childhood, although I did live right next door to two cousins who were very mean to me. The picture is taken in the woods north of Isabella where we lived from 1945 to 48. That tar-paper-covered building in the background was where we lived.

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