Depending on how you looked at it, I either stepped into my 30s kicking the door down, or I snuck in through the back. Exactly at the age of 30, I started my first full-time job and moved to Washington D.C. I remember specifically feeling very adult, and doing what I saw as very adult things, like buying button-up shirts at J.Crew and furniture from places that weren’t Ikea. But probably the most adult thing that I incorporated into my life was learning to be on time to shit. It was a concept that never quite took priority. In my life as an artist in the Bay and New York, time was a fluid concept. Every appointment was scheduled with an -ish intrinsically attached. Meeting at 3 really meant 3-ish, which could extend into 4:15 or even beyond, tardiness absolved by the fact that everyone else was going to be late too, or forgotten by a “sooo sorry for being late.” In D.C., people even start early by a minute or two. In D.C., time is valuable and it’s financed by getting people in and out promptly so that they can move on to the next thing that has been manicured into their calendar. Until having a job in D.C., it was never a concern that popping into an engagement 20 minutes late meant that everyone else had already started and that you’d be greeted by harsh glares. Being tardy means that you commit the treason of robbing others of their time, expecting them to stay late because you arrived late – you might as well reach into their pockets and pull cash out of their wallets. In D.C., time is moral, and lateness is a sin.
If this is adulting, I’m so over it. Within five years, I’ve converted from being flexible with myself and others to being a miser of minutes. It’s not that I’m never late, but when I am, I beat myself up over it. I sometimes judge others who show up late in the way that used to be habit for me. Part of being so stringent means that I stuff my days with so much more, appointments stacked like a Jenga tower, ready to topple if things don’t start or end exactly as planned.
This is no way to be the kind of person I actually want to be – who leaves room for daydreams and tangents, sauntering between engagements, reflection before going onto the next thing. It’s true that time is valuable, but I prefer to trade as opposed to spend – when the few minutes I get somewhere late is easily bartered with the next time I’m left waiting. It means that avoiding the feeling of being flustered is accomplished not by being so rigid with the mechanics of the clock that you appear like a regularly scheduled program, but knowing that you are arriving to absolutely no judgement – that your entire interaction won’t be colored by the fact that you showed up at 3:07 instead of 2:54.
Much has been said about the rise of personal property, and how capitalism led to things once communal now becoming intrinsically tied to one’s sense of individualism. The same could be said about time. It never was really mine, or yours. How do we spread the wealth?