You’re probably going to want to read Part 1 for this to make sense, but let me see if I can sum up:

We were talking about being on (metaphorical!) Island Time, and how crazy, delightful, weird and uncanny it is when you suddenly perceive time to be plentiful and spacious.

I told some stories about living in a period of very extreme money-tightness but when time was the only thing that wasn’t limited. And I think you’re caught up…

Opposite land.

Me-from-then wouldn’t recognize my life today. Where things are basically the opposite of what they were in Berlin.

Instead of the semi-legal life in an abandoned building with junkies on the stairs, I have a just-right-for-me home — which I call Hoppy House — in northeast Portland.

With a garden. And a window seat that looks out on it where I can write.

Instead of having to teaching yoga, Shiva Nata and destuckifying techniques in squatted buildings, I run an amazing studio called the Playground. And I’m the CEO and pirate queen of the crazy ship that is The Fluent Self, Inc.

Same but different.

Those are the parts that me-from-then doesn’t recognize.

In fact, I’m not sure what blows her mind more: the unfamiliar thing that is stability and sanctuary. Or the fact that we totally run a corporation (ahahahahahaaaaaaaa what?!). Even if it is a tiny good-for-the-world one.

But there are lots of things she does recognize:

A life devoted to untangling patterns, deconstructing them and rewriting them. Working in the helper mouse sector. Living mindfully but in a way that is playful and silly as well as conscious and intentional.

Same but different.

Anyway, the point is: the life she knew was one where money was impossibly tight, while time was this wonderful, plentiful, accessible resource.

And at some point everything switched.

I’ve been running this business for six years as of this month.

There was definitely a period where my perception was that both time and money were tight and unavailable. The No Time No Money grumblethrum monster collective did a lot of yelling and teeth-gnashing.

But then things basically reversed. Money became more ease-filled while time became more and more scarce.

Obviously it’s not like I’m rolling in piles of gold coins a la Scrooge McDuck, but things are good.

I run a successful company. It’s been years since we’ve required those vast leaps of faith to trust-hope-believe that we’d make it through the next month. Saying a quiet thank you to here to everyone and everything who believed during the hard times.

And sure, there are still those moments of “Eeeek!” where I suddenly think I’m going to end up living in a cardboard box. It’s just that they’re not a reflection of reality: it’s a flash of poverty-PTSD triggering the monster fear, and then I deal with that.

What happened to my relationship with time?

So. Somehow at the same time that money and my relationship to actually having it was becoming less restrictive, my relationship with time went the other way.

From my perception of time being plentiful and bendy to experiencing it as something limited and rigid. To a relationship that was full of challenge.

It seriously took me six years just to be able to justify stuff like jetting off to a dance class. In the morning?! On a weekday?!

I’m somewhat better at that sort of thing now, having learned — slowly, grudgingly, over time and through extreme trial and error — that taking time actually helps me and my business.

Lots of people (cough, possibly me) tell you that taking creative time, body time, play time and other forms of you-time will feed your work in the world.

But it’s the kind of thing you kind of have to keep learning until it lives in your body as a truth that you remember is true.

You learn it and then you re-learn it.

So I’ve finally gotten to the point where I can make room for a morning dance class. But the time getting there and back?

I’ve really resented it. Driving there takes twenty minutes. The bus takes 45. So double that.

And that’s where businesswoman me goes into resistance.

That’s forty-five minutes times two during which I could be writing copy, brunching a product, teaching a class, solving admin challenges, working on systems, training someone, working with a client.

At some point I realized that I’d unconsciously traded one extreme for another.

I’d gone from one end of a continuum (“Money is non-existent but hey, time is practically unlimited”)…

… to the opposite side (“We’re cool with money but there is never, ever enough of that incredibly precious commodity that is time”).

Perspective.

Of course, either of those extremes is still better than the place (and I’ve been there) where there is really and truly not enough of EITHER of these.

And I don’t mean the sense of no money and no time. I don’t mean the regular shrieking of the No Money No Time fears. Though that’s horrible too, of course.

I mean literally when circumstances and choices come together in such a way that in that moment, time and money are not available to you. Like in Berlin.

Like back when I was doing monk’s yoga in my tiny non-cell. Or when I worked in the factory. When I had to sneakily wake up at dark-thirty just to steal minutes to be alone and breathe.

Anyway, I would like to believe that there is also another place.

A situation or an experience where both money and time are equally plentiful.

This thought broke my brain.

Equally plentiful? Time and money being readily available? Both of them?!?! Not one or the other but both of them.

What would that even be like?

I don’t know! How do I imagine it? Powerful. Like I can be generous with each (money and time). Giving to myself, others and my life as I feel drawn to.

In ways that are sovereign, supportive, conscious, creative and loving.

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaah! That was the sound of my mind not being able to contain this idea again.

It’s like at some point I got stuck in this distorted forever-thinking. That because I have no time now (or really, because I perceive that my time is not mine or I perceive that my current choices about time will always be the same), this would always be the case.

Except I was wrong. Twice!

I didn’t take the bus home after dance class. I walked in the sun. I smiled at toddlers in sailor hats and stopped to pet some cats. I paused (paws!) to drink water and breathe.

It didn’t take an hour and a half or two hours to reach the Playground, as estimated. It took 47 minutes. Forty seven minutes.

Just two minutes longer than by bus. But much more pleasant.

But the bigger thing I was wrong about was this:

It didn’t matter.

Nothing had been lost by not giving that time to my business. Nothing had been lost.

It was the same as going on pirate queen vacation or being on Island Time. I’d had business ideas. I’d gotten perspective. It was better than hurrying back to work.

I don’t love being wrong, but sometimes I love being wrong.

Where I’m leaving this.

1. Feeling appreciation for me-from-last-week who decided to go on Island Time and for me-from-three-months-ago who wrote the popsicle slip permission slip for me to go to dance class in the mornings.
2. Feeling happy that the experience of making time for dancing brought me back to remembering what my life was like when time was limitless.
3. Writing a reminder in the Book of Me that dance and Shiva Nata bring me home to time.
4. Asking curious, loving questions about this new relationship with time. About what happens if it isn’t either time or money (where both are limited or one is expansive but only so long as the other one gets to be limited).
5. Rewriting some internal rules about the way the world works.
6. Deciding what the next OOD is.

And then we’ll see.

And comment zen for today.

Talking about time and money, and the lack (or lack-of-lack) of each can be really painful and hard.

As always, if reading about my stuff has reminded you of your stuff, you might need to do some extra things to take care of yourself.

Like taking a deep breath and reminding yourself that things get better and that now is not then. You have internal resources now that you did not have before. You can help sad, scared you from then in ways you couldn’t at that time.

We all have our stuff. We’re all working on our stuff. We take responsibility for the fact that it is ours and we remember that it is temporary.

Things that would be lovely today: thoughts and ideas about ways you might experiment with learning more about your relationship with time, with money, with the relationship between them. And more flowers!

Love to the commenter mice, the Beloved Lurkers and everyone who reads.