taking my time(,) seriously
In “Tea at the Treedome,” the third minisode in the pilot of SpongeBob SquarePants, SpongeBob visits Sandy Cheeks’ home. You probably remember how this goes. Sandy, being a squirrel, breathes air; SpongeBob, being a sea sponge, does not. He immediately begins to suffocate. The majority of the episode consists of him vehemently refusing to admit he is in the process of slowing asphyxiating to death. After a sequence of nail-biting denials, SpongeBob (and Patrick) completely dehydrate. Sandy returns from the kitchen to find their shriveled corpses (cue hyperrealistic photo signature to SpongeBob’s visual comedy) and resuscitates them by providing water helmets. Then, everyone has a good chuckle about it.
Supposedly this is humorous to watch. I find it agonizing, both now and when I first saw it as a child. I need it, shrieks SpongeBob, finally accepting the reality of his dependency on water. Holy fuck, our time on earth is bound by mortal constraints, five-year-old me suddenly realizes, and I worry that I am failing to act with the corresponding amount of care or urgency. Or something like that.
It’s not a perfect metaphor — SpongeBob is worried about dying and I’m worried about failing to live well — but the theme of desperation is similar. I’m running out of time, the forcing factor is my looming death, and this inescapable truth is the single biggest source of my grief.
My primary cope for the scarcity of time is trying to use it better. I try not to waste time on activities that I deem “unproductive,” like splashing around in the bathwater of melancholy or going to restaurants that have less than four stars on Google Reviews. I also seek out emotive experiences — things that will make me feel something. Sometimes this equates to wackiness, like attending a feet-themed party or organizing a skinny dipping event to benefit The Fistula Foundation. Sometimes this translates to being honest for an audience, like hosting circling workshops and attempting to make my inner world comprehensible through this blog. But mostly it’s just doing as much novel shit as I possibly can.
I’ve found that one of the best ways to intercept novelty is to leave the house, which is why I schedule as many hangouts as I can. In fact, I’ve started joking that given how prolifically I do it, hanging out seems to be my central reason for being alive. I’m on track to have 100 discrete hangouts in 90 days. Even I’m a little in awe of that number.
My abundant tomfoolery is made possible by several fortunate circumstances (having a manageable job, being extroverted, possessing executive function, etc.), but I like to think it’s viable due to my superior logistical abilities. Student life, working in operations, and managing construction projects trained me to anticipate and react to dependencies, i.e. to figure out how to get things done and keep it pushing. For instance, if X is important but can’t happen without Y happening first, I know to hop on Y ASAP. I’m also pretty good at guessing what Y might be. Or, if X is imminent and will trigger Y, I know to get ready to welcome Y (or even better, to get ahead and begin anticipating Z). Real life has a lot more complexity than simple chain reactions, but the base premises are the same. What needs to happen to get the thing I actually want to happen? How can I prepare for all the likely scenarios (and a few of the unlikely ones, too)? Am I doing things in the most efficient order?
When you excel at this style of planning, you become both God and Sim, ordaining the activities that you are meant to do in the order that you are meant to do them. Life is a series of successive tasks laid out for your methodical completion. It sounds droll, but there is real peace in feeling like you are doing exactly what you are supposed to be doing. To illustrate with a real-life example: since I need to go for a run tomorrow, I set out clothes tonight to reduce friction, which prompted me to make a calendar event to do laundry three days from now, which reminded me that I should wake up at 7 that day to begin the load in time for breakfast with a friend at 9, which compelled me to add eggs to my grocery shopping list, which made me think it’d be convenient to check out the new antique shop that recently opened next to the supermarket beforehand, which gave me the smart idea to wrap up tomorrow’s run nearby the store so I don’t have to stop back home first, which meant I should tuck a reusable bag into the running vest that I just laid out. And so on.
In most cases, this works without a hitch, like yay, as a result of thinking this through, I’m using time better! That means I can hang out even more! But sometimes it falls apart — it's raining, or the friend needs to push back an hour — and that's when I fall apart too. I am someone who gets unduly affected by plans changing, particularly ones that I spent a lot of time constructing and anticipating. For example, switching happy hour locations a few times as we search for a spot that can accommodate our last-minute assemblage? No big deal. But an anomalous kitchen fire shuttering the hole-in-the-wall I found by scouring forums in foreign languages and planned a day trip around, in a distant locale I will likely never be within 100 miles of again? Devastating.
A mild version of the hypothetical kitchen fire occurred when my friend Wes and I forgot where we parked after ecstatic dance. This was poor timing because I was on my way to see a play. As we speedwalked through the suspected vicinity, the minutes I was going to be late slowly ticked up: first 5, then 10, then 15. A normal person might have experienced light anxiety, or maybe a touch of disappointment. Personally, I opted for thinly-veiled panic. Then despair. Then I started crying and refused to go because "there was no point anymore."
Wes is an incredibly solid dude, so he responded by hugging me, driving me home, and buying us both new tickets for a showtime the following week. I’m thankful to him for being extraordinarily classy, and for not requesting an explanation. But here’s what was going through my head anyway: behind my dramatic reaction was a lot of personal gunk. I had been worried about lapsing on my ability to enjoy being by myself and losing my connection to the world of creative storytelling. Going to the play solo symbolized the fact that I still cared about both. In the lead-up to the show, I comforted myself by imagining the usher’s look of surprised gratitude upon seeing such a young person attending theater by herself. I daydreamed about taking my time to read the playbill cover to cover, hot tears streaming down my face at the show’s climax, and going to an izakaya afterward to journal pensively about my reflections and achieve peak edgy quirkiness. And I needed to happen exactly like that or not at all.
One interpretation is that I should simply loosen my grip on things, which is a well-received suggestion. I feign easy-breeziness for about 90% of things. But for the other 10%, I can’t release the compulsion to make the moment count — to push it in the direction of perfect. It’s nonsensical to spend an hour assembling a very good 15 minutes, but it’s usually worth it. All the best times take time.
My workplace recently invented a Hot New Typing System: serious goose vs. silly goose. It’s pretty simple; you’re either one or the other. I learned about the concept at the same time as six of my coworkers, many of whom have objectively important, high-stakes jobs that involve allocating millions of dollars a year. To my surprise, every single one of them said they were a silly goose, despite the fact that they have jobs that require you to be sterile on Twitter and directly correlate to having a diploma from an elite university. Meanwhile, there I was, wearing Vibram FiveFinger shoes (the most unserious of all footwear) with a star-shaped sticker stuck to my face, thinking to myself, uh yeah I’m probably a serious goose.
Being serious undeservedly gets a bad rap, which is why so many people hesitate to identify with it. After all, silly is fun! Silly is chill! Silly gets invited to the party! But serious is thoughtful. Serious is sincere. Serious gets invited to the reconciliation, the bedside, the conversations that matter most. I’ve come around — I’m proud to be a serious goose.
The way I understand it, this brief sliver of together is the only thing we get. We should respect its preciousness by taking it seriously. We should enjoy it while we can.
“[W]e should be careful
Of each other, we should be kind
While there is still time.”
- Excerpted from Philip Larkin’s “The Mower”