Time has been on my mind a lot recently. I’ve moved to London with my partner and for him time
is precious. He works as a vet from 9-7, 5 days a week, when he gets home he needs to eat and
rest, and his weekends have to be filled with down time. His free time is reduced to almost nil
from Monday to Friday. His time is allocated. For myself, I’m seeking employment at a moment in
history where competition blocks all but the finest or most appropriate candidates. 90% of the
time I’m far from a perfect match, and with this level of unemployment anything short of a perfect
match is not enough. My time is my own, and yet more than ever it escapes me. When I’m
applying to jobs I feel my time is well spent, but there are many hours in the day where the new
available jobs are already applied for and I’m left at an end.
What do I do with my time? It has
become a menace. I feel guilty for not using my time to apply for jobs, and yet there are no
suitable jobs left to apply for. No one is allocating my time, and I can only allocate my own time to
what I deem progressive to my goal. But who is to tell me what that is? My entire situation, or
further yet, my entire mind is preoccupied precisely with occupation. Who is to decide what I can
do that can help further my job search? If I could tell myself then I’d have a job. It’s a vicious
circle.
Of course, my partner is in the situation where on the weekends he does not struggle to occupy
himself, and yet this time is not allocated. Only that isn’t quite true. When the majority of your
waking hours are allocated to work, the rest of your time becomes allocated to recuperation.
When someone has you on the hook with a salary, they dictate all your time. Outside of work?
You’re finding ways to waste time. Only now I see him and envy his preoccupation. Don’t get it
twisted, it has nothing to do with salary. I envy that his time is meaningful. But how can time have
meaning? Isn’t time an abstract measurement? We calculate it in seconds, minutes, hours. How
can meaning be attributed to that? Perhaps time is not so simple.
Do my partner and I experience time the same way right now? I hope it’s clear by now that we
certainly don’t. My time is devoid of meaning and it poses me a major conundrum, whereas his
time is overloaded with meaning. We’re living through precisely the same measurements of time,
many hours of it we share together, and yet our experiences of it could not be more different. The
effect of his time is exhaustion, and mine boredom and frustration. I find myself in a situation
where money is not my immediate problem, although I can’t deny it drives my problem.
The real
issue is what on earth do I do with my time? That indecision, that guilt of owning your own time is
boredom: I cannot decide what to do with myself if my time is idle regardless of how I spend it. It
is the feeling that I owe my time to someone, but who deserves my time beyond myself. Well, it’s
the hand that feeds you, it's the provider of money, but the provider is arbitrary without the money
itself. Money is what you owe your time to, every living second.
