Time, I and schedules

NOw here is the thing

I was stressed, very stressed.

Strangers

people at shop counters

friends were telling me: “Calm down, you don’t need to be stressed.”

And I was answering: ” But I am not stressed.”

Anyone who has seen one hollywood film with a therapy session knows what this means

But I am not stressed

So I was stressed, I was overworked

I didn’t get into auditions

Our attempts to make a theatre group were a tragedy worse than than Cameron’s Titanic

So then I was stressed, anxious, overworked and dissapointed

Girl, you were dipressed

somebody would say

I don’t think so

I was good

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I had this constant feeling of running to be on time

to catch the bus

to get home and cook

to get off work

and meet my friends

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I had this constant feeling that I didn’t have enough time

most importantly I didn’t have enough time to work on the things that I really wanted to do

So I was constantly trying to make time in my working schedule in order to make an artpiece… in a way this meant working overtime without getting paid of course

At night I had this feeling that I didn’t do enough during the day and I had to stay awake to enjoy the stillness, to compensate for something that I didn’t get done during the day. to hang out with myself, to listen to my desire

So I went to bed late

sometimes I got out of bed very early to work in 4 different places in athens

and Oh Athens is a big city

yes spending four hours a day in public transport makes you feel that you don’t have enough time

But what is this about

feeling that I don’t have enough time

enough time for what?

Is it the fear of death

Hm, I don’t really think that

Death makes me very very sad

yet I don’t feel really afraid of death

Sometimes I think:

that is a great moment

I am relaxed I am happy I am content

I love I am loved

That is a great moment to die and that would be totally fine

So I don’t think death is my problem

It is scheduled days and lolyness

I think that constantly scheduling and planing how a day, a week, a month should be spend makes people lonely

At least it makes me lonely

How so?

I don’t know yet

let;s talk about it later

So constantly planing, calculating, schueduling makes me feel that I don’t have enough time

How so

That’s why scheduling is there

So that I can fit the things I want or need to do in a specific amount of time

I doesn’t work for me

First of all I cannot estimate how much time I need to do a task

and that leads me to overloading myself with work

THis can be solved easily

Admitting that I can do a lot less work in a day and scheduling one task per day could be a solution

But I am an overachiever

that’s ok sweetheart

Don’t worry

do less

people won’t think less of you because of that

Correction: your parents won’t think less of you because of that

Ok that is solved now that I have typed it in my blog

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Yes I believe in magic

Still I want to described a very recent experience

So yesterday I woke up after a long good night’s sleep

I made coffee and sat in front of my lap top to read a bit of literature for PBR

I look at the clock and say: Great 45 min is a nice amount of time to do some relaxed morning reading before class

Wrong

it wasn’t

I started looking at the clock every ten minutes

how much am I going to get done before I need to go?

Oh I have just red two pages

What time is it

Oh I need to get up and get dressed in ten minutes

Let’s see how much I will have read until then

Which is a very stupid thought because I know how much I can read in ten minutes

It is exactly one page of academic writing

So why ‘let’s see’?

I don’t need to see

I know

It is one page

accept it

And if for some reason it is going to be more then I will be pleasanlty surprised

and if it’s less

then I will know that either I am not concentrated today

or that this text is a bit dense

So why the sudden rush?

I truly do not know

What I have noticed though is that since my third attempt to go through a day without checking the time at all

Which of course failed

Yet I succeeded in checking the time much less than I usually do

And this has stayed with me also after the experiment

So now I think less and less about checking the time

which also means that think less and less about checking my phone

which then means that people might call or text and I might not see that in time

In what time?

And then I call them back and I hear

Where have you been!

I WAS NOT AVAILABLE

people

chill I am not oblidged to check my phone constantly

And what if I miss something important

A call from a friend that is in need

An invitation to a spontaneous walk in the park

Then I probably would need to take a rain check

But if I am not available now and if my friend is not available when I am available then we won´t ever meet and I will be lonely

Overdramatic again

No, not really

because this happened to me very often because my friends were working office hours and I was working whatever hours and also during weekends. So it was really difficult for me to meet with people when I had a day off

Yes feeling lonely is a great fear of mine

Feeling that I am not part of a group

We moved a lot when I was a child and I changed school environments more often than others

So it was important for me to get accepted quickly by a group of people

And I always found myself making this effort to be accepted

And I never was around much to have a best friend

This is one psychoanalitic explantion

Another simple explanation is that I am a bit strange a bit antisocial a bit shy and it takes a bit more effort to be part of a group or to keep some steady friends around

Or I have watched too much ‘Friends’

Not everybody has a beloved group of friends around them that are available to spent every breathing munite of their time drinking coffee and hanging out

So I quess it’s ok to not have that

Truth is I am very picky with my friends

So yes…. the feeling of not having enough time the constant sensation of being stressed

The need to make an art work in Athens

led me to start walking around Athens a s a clown

And I recently realized what this might entail

I read in Solnir’s “A field guide for getting lost” about a incident that might occur in indegenous tribes of North America. When a member of the tribe is for some reason troubled or in a place or grief the walk away from the tribe and start wandering around not staying at one place for long.

And I think that was the case with me too. I was uneasy about something, I was troubled, I even could say, I was grieving

Grieving for all the things that went wrong during the crisis

For all the things that I had not accoplished yeat although \i was promised I would accomplish

for all the the dreams that needed to be changed now during crisis

wherein my work (any work: teacher, actor, baker, sales person) was not worth of a decent paycheck

I was grieving for all the years that passed with me trying to ajust to the crisis insteat of being productive and creative

So I was walking around Athens because I was troubled

I was also attempting for people to notice me

And then I came to MTP

and I waas asked what is my practice

and I didn’t even think to say that my practice is walking and paying attention

It didn’t sound important enough

So let’s start from the beginning

My practice is based on walking around the city without destination, without a watch without a spartphone and paying attention to the landscape

It is connected to my concern about scheduled measurable time and how this perception of time in my view enhances stressleves, individualism and linelyness in acity like AThens

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