A Broken Relationship With Time

Or, accepting we're not able to press pause.

Wondering what JFT is? You can tap your sweet lil’ thumb here. Thank you for reading this even when it’s not that great ily.

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1. Hello from a Monday.
   
   Something to know about my upbringing is that I was raised by a travel dad. For a many years, mostly when I was in elementary and middle school, my dad traveled for work upwards of 200+ days out of the year. Pre-9/11 my mom and I were on a first name basis with the security guards at the tiny North Dakota airport. We’d waltz through without tickets to meet my dad at his arrival gate whenever we could, usually with some sort of pastry from the one cafe in said airport in hand. Eventually when it wouldn’t be as much of a disruption to me being in school or whatever general activities I had going on, my mom and I started tagging along on the occasional trip. And in doing so, my dad instilled in me the necessity of being a good, no flawless, air traveler.
   
   I’ve had a Delta Skymiles account for over 20 years. I can pack over a week’s worth of clothes into a carry on and no, I do not need help getting it into the overhead bin thank you very much. You are not going to find me sans headphones or inappropriately reclining my seat or (the worst offense of all) not offering whoever is unfortunately in the middle seat at least one arm rest. I’m great at navigating an airport, and a lot of that is thanks to my dad.
   
   There’s an adage he used to say to me all the time when we’d travel that I hear in my head whenever it’s a airport day.
   
   “If you’ve got time to spare, go by air.”
   
   So when I woke up at 5 AM yesterday to finish packing and head to Harry Reid International Airport for my 9 AM flight home only to see a text from Alaska that I was now rebooked on a 5:30 PM flight instead, it didn’t completely send me in a spiral. It’s to be expected, really.
   
   Air travel has…never been that great, let’s be real. Something about an airport/an airplane makes a lot of people’s brains turn off and they fully forget how to be a functional member of society. I think it’s the recycled air and weird combo of aggressive overhead lighting mixed with massive windows, personally. But in our post-Covid world air travel has gone from “not that great” to “pretty fucking abysmal.” Workers and pilots are understaffed and overworked, airlines are pretty much just banks in the sky at this point, and even things like upgrading your seat barely gets you anything beyond maybe a few inches of extra legroom.
   
   All of this to say, I assume if I’m getting on a plane in the year of our lord 2023, it’s probably going to suck.
   
   “If you’ve got time to spare, go by air.”
   
   So instead of having an idyllic, home-relatively-early-from-a-trip-Sunday filled with lounging, laundry, Door Dash, and writing this Substack, I instead found myself killing time at The Venetian, taking advantage of my hotel’s late checkout policies (bless u), and gossiping with some friends over vodka sodas in a bathrobe. I killed more hours at the airport (a pretty bad one, in my opinion) reading and eating a sad plate of french fries. And then 9 to 10 hours after I thought I’d be home, I actually made it.
   
   Not the Sunday I planned for, but if you’re a seasoned traveler you know it could have been a lot worse.
   
   Anyway I think I want to become a train girl because flying is kind of bullshit. I’ll look into it and report back.
   

2. To my core, I am a bed girl.

   

   There is truly no place I would rather be than in bed. Yes, this is partially because I have cultivated my bed to be probably one of the most cozy and comfy around, but it’s also just been a part of my personality for a long time.
   
   I work from bed, research for projects from bed, read from bed, write from bed, shop from bed, catch up on TV from bed. I don’t eat in bed as much…but still on occasion. A little bed snack never hurt anyone. My morning routine contains a solid hour of news/scrolling in bed before I will myself to actually get up and get going. The simple act of being in my bed consistently brings my anxiety down from an 8 to a solid 4.6. And as someone who often literally wakes up from/with anxiety, that’s not a small thing to me.
   
   This is not anything profound or deep. I just love being in bed. Collapsing into bed after a long day of work, or night out at the bars, or an unexpected all day of travel? Unparalleled. Propping yourself onto four to six pillows and watching a movie with a silly little beverage and candles everywhere? Peak luxury. Laying in bed on a lazy morning with nowhere to be? Give. It. To. Me.
   
   I don’t have anything existential to say about this. Just my life advice from one lazy girl to any others out there or anyone else needing a little more comfy in their life: invest in your bed. Buy nice sheets. Have as many comforters and pillows and blankets as you like. Put a sound machine on your nightstand. Invest in curtains and a fan and a room spray that ties it all together. It’s worth it. Worth it worth it worth it.
   

3. If I were to be asked my Four Favorites from Letterboxd…
   
   For context, here is an example interview if you’re unfamiliar. Maybe I’ll dive into my reasonings and thoughts at some point but for now, no additional info or thoughts. Just my (current) top four movies. Happy watching.
   
   Four: Never Let Me Go

   

   
   Three: Jennifer’s Body

   

   Two: Everything Everywhere All At Once

   

   
   One: Practical Magic

   

4. Let’s bring the mood back down ever-so-slightly, shall we?
   
   I’ve been thinking a lot about this essay about “The Pandemic Skip” from The Cut. As the title implies, the essay covers both the author’s and other’s musings around the years we lost to Covid. How we started 2020 in one place and we’re only just now in 2023 sort of getting back some level of normalcy, but that normalcy feels anything but, well, normal.
   
   [To be fair, I absolutely loathe the sentence “the new normal.” What does that even mean? What was ever normal? Was anything? I sincerely doubt it. Another rant for another day.]
   
   Some of the aftereffects of the pandemic skip are painfully obvious. 20-somethings who came of age during lockdown have little idea how to act in a bar, or at festivals, or at a concert. Students who spent a year+ at home behaved immaturely (at best) when returning to a classroom. Those of us navigating RTOs realize we don’t feel good in any of our 2019/2020 corporate-wear. Our relationships changed, our priorities shifted, and it seems like no time has passed while simultaneously too much went by too quickly.
   
   I think some of the wake ups we’ve been been experiencing as we truly shift into a Post-Covid world are quieter, more intimate, more insular, more to do with how we’re supposed to guide ourselves through the world. And those can be just as daunting to deal with. What is most important to you? Where do you put your energy? What kind of friend, partner, lover, and just human being do you want to be?
   
   But then at the same time, is that really indicative of something to do with the pandemic? Or are we going through extremely natural side effects of that whole thing called “getting older” and “evolving” and “becoming a self-actualized person”? Are we just looking for something to point to to say, “That’s the root of the growing pains!!” and Covid/lockdown is a very, very easy one to blame?
   
   Something that has been sitting at the front of my mind lately is that we will never have enough time. That (to borrow a phrase from one of my favorite books of essays) one day we’ll all be dead and none of this will matter. I don’t bring this up in a “depressed and morbid” kind of way but more of a “the inevitably of loss is so painfully palpable how can you not think about it” kind of way. Death or the concept of it doesn’t keep me up at night. But being confronted with not having enough time with something, someone? That’s the stuff of nightmares.
   
   But! But!! That’s the thing, isn’t it! All of this (gestures vaguely) is and always has been glaringly impermanent. Whether we lose a year to a virus or to a falling out, we still lose that time. Whether 30 to 33 blew by you because of a once-in-a-lifetime historical blackhole or mental health struggles, that time still passed. Whether pandemic and a lack of “normalcy” or something else entirely, none of us can stop the world from turning.
   
   As much as I think there is validity to the science and sociological investigations about the post-Covid of it all, I do also think some of it is just simply the nature of realizing that time will never wait for you. And that’s an uncomfortable thing to accept. No one is ever ready for the possibility of not having enough time.
   
   So what do you do? Idk, man. I’m just writing about it and talking about this that and everything else in therapy once a week.
   
   I do think, however, that the obvious answer is be grateful for the time you have. Savor what you can. Memorize as much of it as possible. Take as many pictures as you want even if strangers are staring, leave yourself little notes to never forget, highlight your books and send your friends postcards and hug a little longer and do whatever you can with the time that’s there.
   
   Taking in the time while you have it will never be skippable.
   

5. Not to bring up my bad travel day yet again, but I finished this book on the plane.
   

   

   @casey.mcquinston on instagram

   For being an almost-romance novel, I actually enjoyed it very much. An excellent hotel pool read.
   
   To briefly summarize the book follows 20-something, baby bisexual August who has freshly moved to New York City in search of starting over. In a classic meet-cute, she literally runs into Jane on the Q and immediately has a ✨crush✨. She quickly realizes there’s more to Jane than she initially expected, especially revolving around who Jane is and why she seemingly cannot get off the subway. Mystery, sci-fi, fighting gentrification in Brooklyn, queer chosen family and other levels of sweetness ensues.
   
   One of the worst things about Getting Older™ is I can feel my sensitivity bone growing and growing. TikToks about pet loss? I will spiral immediately. Movies involving an emotive speech and any sort of mommy issues? I will well up in a second. Video games (TLOU2 callback) that have intricate storylines and take you on a 15+ hour journey? I will be wrecked.
   
   The problem with this is books are no exception. I say it’s a problem because I often am reading in public. And to me that is extra a problem because I don’t really care to expose my growing sensitive nature to strangers.
   
   This line from One Last Stop got in me in particular last night and had me biting the insides of my lip to stop the tears from flowing and disturbing my seat mate who insisted on having her phone at full brightness for the entirety of the flight:
   
   “She kept running because she never quite learned what home was supposed to feel like. That, especially, August can understand.”
   
   OUCH.
   
   Anyway. I’m going to leave this one here because the Vegas and the travel of it all has made me a little braindead. But reading about chosen family will always get me right in the gut. And if that sounds up your alley, you should check it out, too.
   
   ❣️

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