Reclaiming My Time

I think a lot of us have seen the video I’m linking here. It’s US Congresswoman Maxine Waters fiercely reclaiming her time during her a questioning of Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. This guy Mnuchin is giving some long-winded answer to her question, probably in order to avoid answering the question at all. And hammering him back to the question is Maxine Waters, as she reclaims her time on the House floor.

If only we could do that with other parts of our lives — like an illness which has held us up in bed for a month. Imagine just announcing “I’m reclaiming my time!” and the weeks you lost fall back into your hands.

Or maybe you’ve ended a relationship which took your life utterly off course. A quick “reclaiming my time!” spins you back to the bar where it all began, and you spend the evening dancing with your friends instead.

A lot of conversation about getting back lost time on the internet centres around social media. I like this article by Christopher Butler which suggests one remedy to that is picking up a notebook instead.

Yes, social media takes chunks out of our days, and fixing that addiction is possible. But what about those other things I mentioned — how do we reclaim time from moments or seasons of life which felt totally out of our control?

My Plan for 2021

2021 is coming and, unlike every other New Years’ Eve I’ve experienced, I don’t have any resolutions. I’ve not even had any major desire to look back over 2020 and reminisce.. Normally by this point I’d have the notebooks out and would be tallying up my highlights and achievements like a Personal Report Card from the Universe.

Standing at the threshold, at the end of what has been A Bad Year, I’m wary of Another Bad Year looming. I mean, if 2020 has taught me anything, it’s that stuff can always get worse. I know there’s that phrase that goes, “it’s always darkest before the dawn,” but I feel like this year I’m wearing sunglasses in a cave. For everyone, this year has seen our lives shuddering to a halt: we’ve been separated from our friends, partners and families; we’ve lost money, lost certainty, lost people.

We know we’ve got at another year of weirdness to come. And after this virus slows down… what’s next? What’s waiting round the corner?

At school I picked up trophies for music composition, drama and english. But I was never recognised for my one, true academic passion: worrying. God, I can worry as if my life depended on it (which I guess is what worrying is, anyway? thinking your life depends on everything). One of my major worries over this year was time. Time we’re losing, time we’ve lost. Using time well. Securing future time by making your life time-loss-proof. I’m sure there’s a better word for that.

I’m starting a project in 2021 that will explore the concept of time, particularly wasted time. This might mean time that’s genuinely been taken away from us (by illness, death or, oh I don’t know… a pandemic?), or time we conceive as wasted (the wrong relationship, the wrong body/gender, years of chasing a defunct dream or years of indecision). And through a climate'-charged lens: have we, as humans, wasted our time on earth?

It’s heavy-hitting stuff! I mean, as I’m reading over this whole post I’m like, “Jesus Olivia, that’s a one-way ticket to Downtown. As in, the town where you feel down all the time.” But the main point of me doing this is to try and answer the question — can we make this a good thing? Is wasted time a good thing? And if it’s not a good thing, then how can we make it good, or better for the people experiencing it? How can we re-frame it?

Ultimately what I want to do is then present these questions and answers in a format which might be a podcast, or a concept album, or a stage show, even. My first port of call in the new year is to start talking to people and recording our conversations. And to keep writing here to share what I’m learning and ask questions.

Another question I have at the moment is, “How does any of this relate to what I do as an artist?” My current projects are writing 100 Tiny Songs and a few songs which may either be released as an EP or as singles next year. I already have some connections to make with both of those projects to the idea of wasted time. I’ll write about them here.

Anyway, hang tight, happy new year and don’t worry too much,

Olivia.