As if I could…do that thing listed in the title: Make time. Actually manufacture it. Have some sort of spinning wheel where minutes could unfurl like a long piece of fabric. Or maybe a 3D printer would work better. Or perhaps this would all become a dystopian nightmare like in the book The Age of Miracles (which is a goodie, BTW). Maybe this is pandemic layover stuff: that for a year+ while busy with some stuff, I was also exempt in a large way. (I suspect maaany of us feel that way). It’s not as if I’m being excessively social (not even being mildly social, actually), it’s more a time management issue around how time and my creative stuff go together. The idea that even though I don’t get paid for it so therefore I feel I should be spending my time with the paying activities, it’s naturally the thing I want to spend all my time doing.

The phrase “time management” is an oxymoron, don’t you think? Like really. Manage a slippery monster called time? Good luck with that. I can see there are limits to put around the thing. Unions have managed to set terms around worker’s rights and time. The entertainment industry has sort of worked out a system for how time is used for visual and sound mediums (although there are clearly outliers: the movie Cleopatra clocks in at over 4 hours and the song “The Whirlwind” by Transatlantic at 77 minutes. The first starred Liz Taylor and included a pretty hefty bit of history…so… fine. The second is by a prog-rock band and to hear it end-to-end would quite literally be my definition of torture. Given the choice: Hot pokers in eyes or headphones over ears. No contest.). A book I just bought, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman is fantastic on this topic. I heard him interviewed here and he made me both laugh and loudly exclamicate in recognition (mask covering mouth during weekly epic walk, so less staring by other humans when I made those noises). He talked about the mentalness of thinking that by finishing a (lengthy) to-do list, a person will then think, Great, the deck is clear and NOW I can focus on what I want to do. But, big BUT, there is never a real tangible end to the list of to-do’s. So how to navigate into your want-to-dos without feeling like A) you’re ignoring the need-to-do stuff and B) how not to feel grumpy, angry, cheated, sad because you think there’s never time to get to the want-to-dos. (He has a great column in The Guardian cheekily called This Column Will Change Your Life. The column will also make you chuckle, maybe actually laugh in that big way that makes people stare but feels so good.)

So, you know, time. It’s apparently here to stay. As reliably frustrating as death and taxes. Solid and dependable as … I actually can’t think of anything solid and dependable. You can take it, spend it, lose it, squander it. Manage it, not so much. And that’s all I have to say about it, except I’m excavating, then building a fence around a plot of my own where I’ll spend some time on my own creative playground. At least that’s my goal. To all of you, please have a good week ahead with some moments taken, spent, lost, and squandered on things you want to do.