Mandy Brown: “Energy makes time”

I like how Mandy proposes an inversion of priorities in this recent post. Too often I try to squeeze creative work (or rest, or working out, or anything fun) into what remains after work has claimed its space in my calendar. And even in work I’ve been pushing against recurring meetings crowding away blocks of time needed to focus on projects and real-time collaborative work.

I appreciated this bit about the fluidity of time:

But there’s something else I want to suggest here, and it’s to stop thinking about time entirely. Or, at least, to stop thinking about time as something consistent. We all know that time can be stretchy or compressed—we’ve experienced hours that plodded along interminably and those that whisked by in a few breaths.

Also this, about how to break the rules of space and time:

It turns out, not doing their art was costing them time, was draining it away, little by little, like a slow but steady leak. They had assumed, wrongly, that there wasn’t enough time in the day to do their art, because they assumed (because we’re conditioned to assume) that every thing we do costs time. But that math doesn’t take energy into account, doesn’t grok that doing things that energize you gives you time back. By doing their art, a whole lot of time suddenly returned. Their art didn’t need more time; their time needed their art.

Speaking of time, I tend to read Mandy’s posts via RSS, and it was only today that I realized the colors of her site slowly change, like it’s breathing.