Reframing My Experience of Time (as a Working Mother)
This year especially, as we’ve transitioned the kids to learning from home (and in combination with changes to my work-from-home business), I’ve noticed this sense of “never-enoughness” with my time:
I didn’t spend enough conscious time with the kids.
I didn’t have enough time for myself.
I didn’t get enough time for the work I wanted to do.
And when will I make enough time for my partner?
Spend enough. Have enough. Get enough. Make enough.
Is this all about scarcity of time? Is this all about how time becomes currency? And, is it possible to reframe my experience of time?
When I started working from home (and around the same time I became a mother), I thought a lot of my problems could be solved through “time management.”
And I’m not alone. Oliver Burkeman has written an entire book (called Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals) about this cultural misunderstanding of time.
That’s kind of what I learned in school, too: employers want you to go to college to demonstrate that you can handle a massive number of tasks with limited time. (Ironically, or not, I did not learn this in college; instead I learned how to sacrifice FUN for WORK.)
Maybe, though, the solution is less about how I “manage” time and more about how I experience it.
This year especially, as we’ve transitioned the kids to learning from home (and in combination with changes to my work-from-home business), I’ve noticed this sense of “never-enoughness” with my time:
I didn’t spend enough conscious time with the kids.
I didn’t have enough time for myself.
I didn’t get enough time for the work I wanted to do.
And when will I make enough time for my partner?
Spend enough. Have enough. Get enough. Make enough.
Is this all about scarcity of time? Is this all about how time becomes currency? And, is it possible to reframe my experience of time?
Because cultural understandings of time will take awhile to change. But I can invite change within my own experience right now.
What happens when I consider that -
early morning chores don’t require me to quickly rush through; maybe it’s an opportunity to work (slowly) together with my kids
washing dishes after every meal isn’t a waste of my energy; maybe it’s an opportunity to let my mind wander for awhile
helping my youngest put on her winter gear several times an hour isn’t (only) time-consuming; maybe it’s, for some reason, the opening she needs to share with me her most thoughtful thoughts
The learned-feminist in me questions (1) why I’ve chosen these examples, all stereotypically the work of the “traditional” woman or mother, and (2) why I should have to reframe these experiences at all.
Have I devalued these moments of my day because they’re mundane? Or have I devalued these moments (and myself) because that’s what I’ve learned through cultural-conditioning?
(Probably both.)
And sure, sometimes I will hate these tasks and despise the number of responsibilities I hold as a mother - despite my attempt to reframe any of it. But I don’t think it’s possible (or even necessary) to examine and reframe every moment of my day, always.
It’s this contrast between the frustrated mundane and the sacred mundane that happens within my lived experience that illuminates what really matters.
(In this case, my presence within the experience.)
This week, partly because I’ve pulled apart these big questions about how I experience time within everyday life, I’m paying close attention to the little moments - especially the ones that feel “not enough.”
Is it possible that the short-and-sweet conversations before breakfast, when everyone is a little bit groggy and hungry for pancakes, is enough? Is it possible that the conversation-cut-short with my husband, about which New Girl character is the best, is enough? Is it possible that the half-yoga-practice between activities, or the few moments I can enjoy a still-hot cup of coffee, are enough?
I think so. (I hope so.) When the frustrated mundane becomes sacred.
xx, alycia buenger
When There's Never Enough Time For You
I’ve felt it. You’ve likely felt it.
“There’s not enough time for me.”
Because there really isn’t - not inside a system that devalues a woman’s time.
We might have the same number of HOURS in the day, but not everyone is deemed the same amount of VALUABLE by society (and not everyone has the same number of OPPORTUNITIES to use time freely).
I’ve felt it. You’ve likely felt it.
“There’s not enough time for me.”
Because there really isn’t - not inside a system that devalues a woman’s time.
We might have the same number of HOURS in the day, but not everyone is deemed the same amount of VALUABLE by society (and not everyone has the same number of OPPORTUNITIES to use time freely).
Mothers especially are asked to “hold down the fort” while the world bumps along around us, without us, overtop us (even if we follow the ways of income-making).
I want to do my part in changing that.
And I have a twofold mission: To consciously UNRAVEL inside day-to-day life (expand our experience of time with short-and-sweet, devoted practice!); and to consciously question the system that asks us to de-value our time currency and squeeze into smaller and smaller spaces.
We practice together. We question together. We unravel together.
My work exists to support you in putting more of yourself inside your days - so that you’re no longer squeezing in time for yourself between or after.
Because you are priority - if not inside the world, inside this space.
This is my offering to you, and to those who feel the “not enough time” mantra of modern-day society.
It’s where I make my art: It’s the place that holds my writing + my teaching. It’s birthed within and from my own experience (and now, mixed with yours!)
This is the practice, the answer-seeking, the resting place, the try-and-try again place, the reminder that you can devote yourself to your Self - even when things are harder than hard.
And my hope is that it becomes a community of support along the way.
Check out my latest project: UNRAVEL YOUR DAYS.
xx, alycia buenger