On time

Something I’ve been noticing for a while now is time pressure. How fast are you, how slow are you, are you on time for an appointment, are you on time, are you always late, do you have to be early? Do you feel like time is slipping away from you, do you feel like you are constantly in a mid-life crisis? Do other people expect you to be faster? Do you need to slow down?

It is enormously taxing on the endocrine system.

The watch

We live in a society that measures things with a clock. Appointment time. Noon is lunchtime; you have to eat. We have a lot of time on an exam. We should have accomplished our job at a certain age.

The fastest

The constant need to do things quickly and that way you will be happy. If I work hard and fast, I can finish early and then I can relax.

At school we measure ourselves by who is the fastest, who is the first to raise their hand, we have competitive sports. There’s a lot of shame around speed and how fast you are or how slow you are.

Time is a huge pressure.

meal time

I grew up in a family where 6pm was dinner time. Whether you were hungry or not. Having to control your appetite to have a meal that you have to eat all of it was difficult as a child because your appetite varies. Nowadays I eat dinner anywhere between 4 pm and 8 pm, depending on my appetite.

What time is it?

At night if I wake up I check to see what time it is, I’ve been stopping checking and wondering, why do I need to know the time, what does it matter? Not looking at the time has also allowed me to sleep longer and deeper.

Time is running out

I have always felt that I should go further with my success in life, I should have overcome those problems that I have not been able to heal. The time is finishing. I am missing things in life.

But there is so much pressure to feel that time is slipping away from me, that if it were more this or that or faster, I would have what I want. Or if things happened earlier then I would have been happy.

Time really is a man-made construct that puts a lot of pressure on us.

Is time pressure a thing in your life?