Time used to be different.

We used to make time with the animals and plants. Spring was when daffodils bloomed, which varied year to year as we moderns account for such things. The wheel of the year turned, and we moved with it.

There is time by the moon and the stars, time by the day– tide of dusk, tide of dawn. There was time by the reigns of kings and emporers. Lineage time. When church bells marked the hour for prayer, the village made its own time.

Now, we live in machined time, picoseconds in their production lines for buying and selling and optimizing.

I still use a clock and calendar to coordinate with other humans, occasionally to get paid. But I am so fortunate that I can make my own hours; cooking during the onramp to hunger, repairing my car as mood and energy strikes me. What it feels like, is I am not producing time so much as gardening it so the shoots can feed and sustain me. It is an existence that is perhaps ‘underoptimized’ but feels closer to flourishing.

To make and mark my own time, for it to grow in response to the seasons within me and the seasons without (rather than spending time in a red queens race of a treadmill of some long dead factory owner) this is wealth, this is perilous freedom that I am so grateful to have.