It's Mine

It’s funny doing research about lost time in a period of your life where time sometimes feels well and truly lost. Poof, gone in a cloud as soon as you reach out to touch it.

Yesterday Boris Johnson announced that English lockdown would continue until early March. I knew that was coming but hearing it on the news just gave me this sinking feeling in my heart. More time to kill. How was I going to do it?

It felt especially hard since I’ve been feeling a bit more anxious and easily aggravated recently. Stuff around control and time are top of my mind. For example — I’m living with my parents at the moment, and this morning my Mum came into my room to ask for some help with a work problem. I had literally just woken up but I spent an hour on it with her. We would also have a work meeting in the afternoon. Just as I got up to get dressed, she suggested I walk into town and buy some fish for dinner. My jaw tensed as I realised that I had now just had the bulk of my day planned out for me within a matter of minutes. I felt like I wasn’t in control of my time.

We worked it out and I didn’t go to the fish shop. The annoyance around the exchange is still lingering, just because it’s something I also felt when I was back in London. One of my flatmates would be keen to drink or have dinner with everyone one evening, or someone would invite a friend round that day or not tell me about it until that day, and boom, all of a sudden I’m obliged to socialise and change my plans last minute. I know it’s not terrible, but it’s just… I care so much about my time and being in control of it. Knowing what’s going to happen next. And in these stretches where it might seem to people that I have a whole expanse of time at my hands, using time the way I want to use it becomes even more important.

It’s like asking a busy person to do a job for you. Sometimes its easier when you’re busy to fit other people in. But when your time is like a vast, empty open landscape, and you’re trying to make sense of it and figure out how to build it, if someone just plonks a castle in the middle of your landscape, it’s gonna piss you off. I know I haven’t got anything going on here just yet, but I need to make this mine.

All of this might sound like whining but I think that cataloguing my feelings around time as I pass through this phase of lockdown is very important. Being stuck in the house, only having one friend to socialise in person with, not being able to travel further than 5 miles from my city, being on furlough and trying to feel purposeful at the same time, having very little money, being apart from my boyfriend as our relationship becomes long distance… these are all human things and the feelings I feel around them might actually help me figure out some ideas with lost time. Even my anxieties around creating this project are helpful clues, too.

That’s all for today.

Me vs Myself

I felt like I was heading for a burnout, which was strange, because I’d only been seriously working on this project for a couple of weeks. But here’s the thing:

Interviewing people about the toughest times in their lives is, unsurprisingly, exhausting.

I totally underestimated that. Going in to these initial 5 interviews, I thought I was experiencing tiredness from the online nature of the calls — that “Zoom fatigue” we’ve all suffered through the pandemic. And as I started to schedule further conversations — I had about 10 on my list in total — I felt a bit of dread about how tired I’d be at the end of it. But I wasn’t thinking in emotional terms.

It came to a head on Monday morning when I interviewed a very close friend and we ended up talking about their suicide attempt, which happened many years ago. At one point when I was listening I was just clutching my chest, as if to bottle up the tidal waves of emotion that were trying to pour out. My friend and I talked for two hours. By the time I hung up the phone, I felt shell-shocked.

It was then, five interviews in, that I realised I had to cancel the other five. I’d set myself up a ridiculous schedule of two interviews a day max, with the view to talk to each person for up to two hours… it didn’t sound like a large amount as I wrote it all down in my planner, but I realised that it was. I had no boundaries, either. I would be listening, open and searching, sometimes sharing parts of myself, holding space for people as they talk about their deepest fears and perspectives. And I wasn’t taking much time in between these conversations to process, unwind, or take care of myself. I was all “go, go, go!”

The irony isn’t lost on me. I’m on furlough and I thought I should use this time by working really hard and fast on the research process of the project, so I wouldn’t have to apply for a research project grant. I wanted to impress people with how much I was getting done. I wanted to smash this stage of the process. I thought 10 interviews was barely enough. More was more, I didn’t want to be left behind. So here I was, anxious about wasting time on a project that was all about reconciling emotions on wasting time.

Kinda dumb, huh?

This project is absolutely about myself and trying to make something for myself, as well as everyone else who experiences anxiety around time. I didn’t think it would get under my skin so quickly.

So now, my plan for the next few weeks is this:

• create a reading list

• read!

• write out interview notes

• add to my research book with lots more notes and ideas as I continue reading and thinking

• write this blog a few times a week

From what I’ve learned, sometimes things move slowly and imperceptibly. So that’s what I’m going to do. Keep doing stuff but letting that underground river (I haven’t written about the underground river yet! I will do soon) run on, to its unseen destination.