Learning to trust the timing of my life.

How I'm healing my relationship to time stress.

Catherine Zack

Jun 13, 2024

∙ Paid

right on time, retreating in Costa Rica 2023 — p.s. we’re going back. who’s coming?

Let me get this out of the way first.

I am *still* often impatient. I want the things I want TODAY. Better yet? Yesterday!

I am *still* often rushing.

I *still* find myself busier than I’d like sometimes. And I am often carrying too much at once, literally — and going nowhere, fast.

AND — at so many times in my tender, dear almost 40 years on this planet, I have felt BEHIND.

When my children were born, I looked at their faces, observed their easeful way of being in this world. No sense of rush or hurry. Utterly present. Right on time.

Listen — of course — I think my kids are special.

But I also know … they’re not.

And if they came into this world present and patient. Awake and aware. Trusting the timing of their lives…. Well, it’s very likely that I did too. And you! And even your boss and even that guy in front of you in line at the store, annoyed at how long this is taking (okay, maybe that’s us sometimes, too).

I believe this *to my core* that our birthright is presence. And an easeful relationship to time. A trust that things will unfold in a natural order. And the more we can align ourselves with that — instead of the alternative — the more content, creative, and kind we’ll be.

I believe this. And yet I forget it often. I’m still practicing my way there, every day.

In the 10 years since I quit Big Law, I’ve been working on healing my relationship to time and time stress.

And yet, this stuff is STICKY!

How did we get here?

All of us rushing, badges of busy-ness emblazoned across our chests, spinning our wheels on the verge of burnout, and yet… still, somehow, we always feel behind?

I have NO answers, but here’s some evidence I’ve been collecting during my lifetime. Some clues as to how we — or at least I — got to this tension with time.

As a nod to my “issue spotting” law-school, hypothetical days and my devotion to learning all things by the Socratic method, here we go …

I am a young girl. Let’s call me 9 or 10 or 11 or 12. I am SO curious about the ages people are when they accomplish their Big Life Milestones. When do people become known for what they do? When do they arrive at their big finish lines?

I memorize the ages, file them away in my mind for my own, adulthood reference point.

I am not very interested in the prodigies or “overnight successes.” I love a “late bloomer.” The Academy-Award-winning actor who didn’t start acting till his 40s. The first-time mom at 41. The empire-building business woman who didn’t start her first company till 50. Always, always the writers turned successful authors who didn’t (self) publish their first book till 42.

It’s almost as though I knew that a karma of mine to work out in this lifetime would be playing the tension between always being in a rush, impatient, and watching the clock with a deep underlying understanding that things take the time they take.

And it’s only now, as I squarely approach my own middle age, that I realize being stuck between this binary of “overnight success” and “late bloomer” is wildly unsatisfying. And it’s reflective of almost no real person’s lived timeline who I know in my own Real Life!

Despite our best efforts and our collective neuroses around time, it’s got a rhythm of it’s own, a set course and flow for its pace.

NOTE TO SELF: You can’t push the river on time. It will unfold, in its own time. And I refuse to have my own timeline put into a binary box.

I am in law school. It’s my first year (“IL year” for my fellow lawyers out there ;). I learn very early on that the only right answer to the question, “how are you?” is: “Swamped.”

I learn this through observation. Trial and my own error.

If you answer “good” or “ok,” the person asking you doesn’t even register your response because they’re already off to the races telling you about how busy they are. How many competing priorities they have. How many deadlines they can juggle. How many hours are filled with work. How little sleep they can survive on. How fast they can move. How quickly they can respond to any request.

Busyness is a badge emblazoned across our chests in law school. And it doesn’t budge once we graduate.

NOTE TO SELF: We are busy. We are impressive. We are important. Tow the party line.

I am 25 years old. I am a newly-minted corporate lawyer. I have just broken up with my longterm, law-school boyfriend. I immediately snap back into “are you my husband” mode?

I feel absolutely behind on the timeline of romance, marriage, family life.

I also spend my days rushing down the hall from meeting to meeting in 4-inch heels.

But time moves quick-quick, slow-slow.

We put out 5pm fire drills most days and then, on any given weeknight, a smattering of us, young associates, are sitting at the mahogany oyster bar downstairs in our office’s lobby, nursing a drink (or several, paid for on our own dimes), while we wait for our to-go dinner (paid for by the firm if you stayed after 7pm, as was your cab ride home), waiting for the partner we sent that work to a few hours earlier. He rarely responds that same night.

Everything is urgent. Everything is important. There is not much nuance.

And, of course, all of our time is measured in 7-minute increments, according to the client (preferably billable, not pro bono or admin) and the matter. Time is tracked. Time has a value. Time is weighted. Time is billable.

NOTE TO SELF: My time is not my own. And time is money, baby.

I am 28 years old. I have quit Big Law. My time is my own again. I have hopped off the straight-and-narrow, linear corporate path. I am no longer climbing someone else’s ladder.

My path is now winding and omnidirectional. There’s a step, a pause, a circle.

It is also now uncertain. But the flip side of uncertainty is possibility.

For the first time in my 20s, I feel young again.

Like I hit the reset button back to age 19, when I was hopeful and still big-dreaming.

I take lots of hammock naps. Days stretch on with time and space to play and write and fall in love.

I am falling in love with my now-husband.

Opposites attract. And Sam is comically slow.

Some people are drawn to it. His yoga classes in the middle of Washington, DC sell out several times each week. In a city who loves to rat-race, his unhurried-ness is a gift. Through embodying his flow, we confront and unwind our habituated hustle.

Some people are *wildly* offended by his comic slowness. Watching people go slow — for most of us busy, rushing folks — can feel like a personal affront. When we’re so used to racing, to juggling all the balls in the air, to fearing that if we stop pushing, the world still stop turning. So when we encounter someone who is NOT, well — that hits deep.

I remember one time, in those early days, Sam and I were taking a walk through that same bustling DC neighborhood. And as Sam sauntered across the cross walk, some (presumably stressed-out, brunt-out) driver at the light laid on his horn and YELLED out the car window, “Hurry it up! Will you?” … even though we still had the cross walk sign in our favor.

It sets many of us off: WHATDOYOUMEANYOUARENOTGOINGFASTIAMGOINGSOFASTICANNOTEVENIMAGINEHOWIWOULDBEGINTOSLOWDOWN?!?!?!?! DIDNTWEALLAGREETOGOFAST?!!!?!?!

I’m pretty sure that Sam just walked slower that day.

Some people are so confused by Sam’s slowness that they become curious about it. Intrigued by it. That was me with him.

On that same walk I described above, Sam eventually paused and looked down at our held hands and asked me, with zero charge, “would you mind loosening your grip?” I died. I also survived.

NOTE TO SELF: We don’t always have to grip and rush to prove that we are alive. In fact, our vitality might be as much about the exhale, as the breath in. As much about the saunter, as the sprint. Opposites attract. Time has time for both.

I will spend the next decade (and hopefully many more) taking slow walks and slow yoga classes with Sam, using his counterpoint of ease and patience to embody my own downshift. If you want to change the way you feel, it seems — you can start by changing the way you move.

On many of these slow walks in this last decade with Sam, I will default into my familiar litany of “I don’t have enough time.”

We have kids now. And my time is again definitely not my own. I feel, most days, like I’m racing against the childcare clock to “fit in my work.”

“I am so behind,” I say.

“Behind what?” he replies, completely without charge again.

Point taken. This annoys me because it shows me I am still gripping. I am confronted.

And yet, I can’t unsee: These are self-imposed deadlines.

So to ease my own inner strife I create a new refrain in my head. It makes me laugh: “I’m so behind. Behind what? An elephant’s butt!”

This is nonsensical and silly and it means absolutely nothing. I made it up out of nowhere. And that’s the point. Because it softens something in me. I loosen my grip again.

NOTE TO SELF: The softening, somewhere, anywhere — the softening helps.

It’s the third or so week of June 2017. I am now 37-weeks pregnant with my first child. Despite my intention to have an unmedicated, un-induced home birth with my midwife, I have also decided that this baby will come early, before his “due date.”

I tell Sam to blow up the birth tub, just in case. “I swear this baby will be early,” I tell him. “I can feel it.”

I don’t feel anything. I just want to rush time. To get there already. Like I said, I am still impatient.

A week goes by, the birth tub deflates a bit. Still pregnant.

Another week goes by and another and another, and I start having to dust the birth tub as I tidy the house in my final nesting phase.

The baby finally comes, at 41.5 weeks.

NOTE TO SELF: You can try to control the uncontrollable. Nice try. You will dust the birth tub instead.

I am worried. I am behind. I am rushing, I am getting dinner ready for our now 3-year-old. I am pregnant again. I literally have too many things in my hands.

I am anxious. I feel time-strapped. It’s high pandemic times. Everything is virtual. I’m trying to re-imagine my work in the world and I’m — ironically / not ironically — teaching mindful time management to companies in zoom workplace wellness sessions.

I am “plannicking” with my work — that’s planning from a stake of panic, if you don’t know. I write emails to my list, I throw workshops and websites up out of a sense of lack (“there’s not enough time, there’s not enough childcare, I am behind, even though the world is at a standstill). I am plannicking.

I am still rushing my child out the door to go on walks, even though the world is on lockdown. He senses my rushing. I can tell this moment is imprinting on both of us. He’s getting a core memory of “there’s never enough time.” And I’m getting a parental guilt pang of “oh shit, I’m passing this onto him.”

One evening, I’m impatiently waiting for Sam to return home to relieve me of parenting. I am in a zoom waiting room for a group meeting with very fancy, impressive people. I am very pregnant with our second kid, trying to strong-arm my preschooler into eating something — anything — for dinner. I growl at my husband for coming home “late.” He gives my frustration a lot of room to breathe. So annoying.

“Excuse me, it seems that some of us are not on mute. Just a reminder you can, um, keep yourself on mute before we officially start here. Thanks.”

Shit.

NOTE TO SELF: When I rush, the best thing I can hope is that I learn a not too-too embarrassing lesson. Plannicking is not a game plan.

I’ve had the same recurring dream *dozens* of times in the 10 years since I quit Big Law.

I am back at my old firm.

We’re approaching the end of the year and annual reviews — which for a young associate means one number: how many hours did you bill?

(This one number of course determines another one number: your year-end bonus and, well, those two numbers become shorthand for your entire worth).

So in this dream, I have no idea why I have returned to Big Law.

But one thing is very clear: I have no billable hours.

I have been doing *something* around the office all year, but it’s not quite clear in the dream what that’s been. I also have no idea how I have avoided entering my monthly billable hours for 12 months straight.

But here we (dream) are: Somehow I have gone undetected all year, and now I’m minutes away from my annual review meeting,

Except I can no longer avoid the numbers: I have exactly 0 client matters. And 0 hours billed. And I have been collecting a paycheck every 2 weeks for an entire year.

Panic sets in.

Luckily, I always wake up before I have to enter that annual review meeting and get caught.

RELIEF POURS OVER ME.

NOTE TO SELF: I am no longer bound by the billable hour in my real life. (small voice echoing in the back of my head: “or am I?”)

It’s 2022 or so again. I am working with a new client who is a lawyer, my age, up for partner this year. She’s a new mom. She came to me after she heard me give a (virtual) talk about presence and multitasking.

I had said something in that talk, like:

“Have you ever been on the phone, ordering the groceries, daydreaming about a vacation sometime somewhere, all well in a zoom meeting about something completely different? Are you ever really where you say you are? Are you ever really with your people? Are you ever actually present?”

I met this client at the point of her constantly barreling through each day, just to crash at the end of them and hamster-wheel race her way to the weekend.

A “taskmaster,” she called herself — the tidy one-word that summed it all up.

In one of our sessions, I tell her: “I see your need to race against the clock. So much is required of your time, your attention, your energy.”

I tell her that the Ancient Greeks had two words for time: Chronos and Kairos.

We usually look for answers and value in “Chronos time” — that’s the scheduling, the task-mastering, the deadlines, the to-do list making, the billable hour. And our society values that kind of time, it’s money-making, it’s productive, it’s what we trade in and how we understand our worth.

“That’s only half the story of time, though,” I tell her.

“Kairos time” — that’s the time that feels like time disappears. Complete absorption, getting lost in the moment, sacred time. Rediscovering the time for all the things we’d love to do “if only we had more time.”

Then it hit me — mid session with my client — a memory: the time-tracking app we used for our billable hours at my law firm? It was called Chronos.

NOTE TO SELF: Kairos never stands a chance if all we value is Chronos.

It’s still 2022 or so. I’m still struggling with pandemic time and mothering time and my lack of time for work. I want so badly things that I don’t yet have to come to fruition. I am in a hurry. And going nowhere fast.

This way of being in the world — this time stress — it occurs to me: Time stress is making miss the beauty of the things that are right in front of me. This stress is making me miss my actual life, while I rush toward waiting for it to happen!

Damn.

So I write down lines from a poem by farmer & writer, the wise Wendell Berry: “what we need is here.” I hang them all over the house.

I make this noticing of the ordinary, extraordinary my everyday practice.

And still, And yet! I am utterly impatient. I want to open a yoga studio in our little Hudson Valley village, and I have from the moment we arrived, in July 2020. L O L.

Spots have opened, property has been developed. Never quite the right fit, developers with different dreams than ours for their spaces. I know it needs to be right in the village center. There is limited real estate. We’re once again exhausted new parents. Sam and I have intentionally dissolved a yoga business we ran together after 6 years, burnt out in the early pandemic days, running utterly on adrenaline fumes and coffee.

No matter, I still want it now.

Sam and I go for our usual slow walk. It’s mid-spring. Where we live in the Hudson Valley, the seasons are honest. Winter is winter. And it is long and bleak and stark. And early spring is slow and sludgy and muddy and wet, no signs of green until…

All of the sudden, you can’t not see it! Buds and blossoms and sprouts are popping up everywhere, seemingly out of nowhere.

I notice all this on my walk with Sam — awestruck “where did this come from?!”

And yet, even observing this beautiful and obvious lesson about timing from the natural world around me, I’m complaining that we don’t yet have the yoga studio. Plannicking again that it hasn’t happened yet.

He turns to me: “Just because it’s not now doesn’t mean it’s never.”

I want it NOW. This is hard to take. He annoys me again. And he is not wrong.

But I look at the “all-of-the-sudden” buds around me and it clicks: SO MUCH happens under the surface, slow, steady, unseen preparation. You can’t rush this unfolding. Nature is a wise teacher: things take the time they take.

NOTE TO SELF: What we need is here. Just because it’s not now doesn’t mean it’s never. Things take the time they take. On repeat. Forever.

Later that year, it’s summer now, and I am turning 37.

I’m exhausted by the YEARS now of trying — unsuccessfully — to control time, during the uncertainty and change of the pandemic. (Dusting the birth tub again, you might say ;)).

I get lost in a deep-dive google search and learn that my birthdate on the Mayan calendar is known as “a day out of time.”

Time apart from time. Kairos time.

I laugh, considering my lifelong tension with the story of time: “Yep, that tracks.”

I decide for my birthday this year, my vow will be: To trust the timing of my life.

We plan a retreat to Costa Rica for the following February — 2023. Three weeks to unplug as a family. To heal, to unwind. To reset our internal clocks. I decide not to work on my computer during those weeks. In fact, I decide not to bring it at all. Not even my trusty notebook for Morning Pages. I will let my mind go blank, my nervous system resettle, my inner sense of timing recalibrate.

I watch my kid — the same one born “late,” and whom I tried to rush out of the house for a walk during quarantine or through dinner on any given night — completely settle. He drops in. He swings on the hammock, screen-free, staring into the middle distance. “Idle & blessed.” Completely bored and completely absorbed. If you ask him what’s up during those weeks he says, “I’m chilling.”

Me too, kid.

We also lead a yoga retreat one of those weeks — something we used to do before we had kids, even into pre-pandemic times. But it had been almost three years — by that point — since Sam & I worked together in this way. (I know, I know I said I wasn’t working in Costa Rica and while this is most definitely work — leading 25 people on an international retreat — it is work in the present tense, unhurried. A week of sauntering, meditation, slow yoga, and hammock naps. Good work, if you can get it.)

And wow, it’s juicy and magic again. I am actually letting things unfold. I am beginning to trust.

On that same trip to Costa Rica, we get a text from a friend back in the Hudson Valley.

He found us our space: right in the center of the village. Two floors. Room for a yoga and meditation studio and our private-client work. We can see it as soon as we get back.

Last week, in June of 2024, we celebrated the one-year anniversary of Village Yoga.

A brick & mortar business, on-paper, successful-enough to thrive in its first year (no easy feat if you ask brick & mortar small business owners).

And in person, a community that’s vibrant, alive, supportive, connected and practicing Kairos time daily (all within a yoga schedule that plays out in Chronos time ;).

Because now I see: both are possible. The full sense of time, both halves make a wholeness. It’s a lot of loosening the grip. Slowing down. Right time, right place, right people — alignment.

It’s now, today. I turn 39 in a few weeks.

The lifelong writer inches her way toward becoming a published author, in her 40s, so it seems. No real surprise there.

NOTE TO SELF: I can trust the timing of my life.

I will probably forget this many times again — of course — even later today. I can only hope that I remember as often as I forget.

No matter, I’m right on time. I bet you are too.

so much more to come & just enough for now,
Cath xo

NOW YOU GO — CLAIM IT in the comments:

Despite the self-imposed deadlines or other people’s timelines, WHERE ARE YOU RIGHT ON TIME IN YOUR OWN LIFE TODAY? What can you trust about the timing of your life too? What does the fullness of time look like for you in any given moment?

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