Time is a Political Issue

The Creative Goods, Issue No. 5

Today, I give you Issue No. 5 of The Creative Goods, a feminist and justice-based advice column for creators with conundrums, written by me, Jill Margo. In this issue, I respond to “Tired Mom Who Yearns for a 12-hour Day in Her Studio” about how to think about and manage time while facing a project deadline as a single parent.

Thanks for being here. As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic too, so please feel free to comment. I’d also love to know if you find the Reflection Prompts helpful!

Oh, and one more thing—I’ll be taking a break from this column in August, but it’ll be back in September, right before the intake begins for the Autumn Follow-through Sessions and the autumn edition of The Seasonal Creator workshop.

Happy summering until then!

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Dear Jill,

I’m a filmmaker/artist and single mom who has my daughter full-time. My ex-partner and I split five years ago, and he went to live in a trailer on his land in the same community. Three years ago, he started another relationship, and now lives mostly at his girlfriend’s home (rent free). They are both artists and he helped build her art studio. Because of this, he hasn't been able to share time in any consistent or extensive way with my daughter who is now 11.

My work/creative day is limited to school hours, and after my daughter goes to bed, if I still have the energy. I mostly work in video production creating for others. So far, it’s paid the bills and kept our needs met. Recently, I received a BC Arts Council grant to create a new work of my own and I have until October to do it. I’m excited but anxious, as it is about to be summer break and my daughter will mostly be at home.

My conundrum is finding the time and energy to do the creating I need to do over the next three months to finish the project while parenting full time. My ex will take her for an evening or day here and there, but rarely if ever for any extended period. His partner has no children and has a successful practice/business. He has his own practice and has just informed me that he has joined a band and will be going on tour in the fall. The work of parenting a pre-teen falls to me, as well as keeping all the balls in the air to provide for her. It's challenging to get into a flow of creation under these circumstances.

Signed,

Tired Mom Who Yearns for a 12-hour Day in Her Studio

Dear Tired Mom,

First off, I’m sorry your ex-partner isn’t fulfilling his co-parenting responsibilities. Although you’ve only stated facts here and not editorialized, I can well imagine how disappointing, frustrating, and challenging it’s been to have everything fall to you without your consent. My heart also goes out to your daughter. I was born to a deadbeat “father” (not the dad who raised me) myself and know that it can be quite painful. So, I just want to hold space for that for a moment—to acknowledge the unfairness and the difficult feelings that come with this situation.

Now, your conundrum: time. In my work, I always try to push back against dominator culture and identify where circumstances aren’t neutral. For instance, time is not neutral. Time is political. How do we know this? For one, the current system of clock and calendar time is tied up with what bell hooks calls “imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy”. There’s a lot to unpack there, but I’ll just touch on it by sharing what Kevin Birth says in a piece called “Calendar Time, Cultural Sensibilities and Strategies of Persuasion”:

“Capitalism has been shaped by the logic of fixed terms and timed transactions and wages have been defined in terms of units of time rather than directly in terms of the ideal timing for the most productive work. The time grid, established by the Gregorian calendar and clock time, is also a tool in bookkeeping—time becomes represented as containers to be filled and/or audited. Modern governance would be quite different without the relationships among global units of time, management, and bookkeeping, particularly since these units of time are used as a means of control and discipline.”

Time is also political because not everyone gets equal “free” time. How much discretionary or leisure time one has is directly related to their social and economic standing. So, through an intersectional, racialized, and gendered lens we can easily see that the system is rigged. Who “owns” time is about power, and men—particularly white and cisgendered men—“own” time more than anyone else. Certainly, more so than mothers and caretakers.

Mothers and caretakers, as you well know, often experience “free” time as fragmented and interrupted by care duties and domestic labour. Brigid Schulte (who I learned about from Kelly Diels, who has also taught me about time) has written about time as a feminist issue and calls these “bits and scraps” of time “time confetti”. She also identifies that this is what sociologists call “contaminated” time: leisure time that’s “contaminated” by being preoccupied with all the other things that need tending to, thus taking up precious headspace and not allowing us to fully embrace that time. And to be clear, for creators, leisure time is often the time we try to fit creative work into.

I’ve given this brief context because I want you to realize that not having enough time is not a you failing but rather a systemic failing—one that your ex-partner, by shirking his responsibilities, has perpetuated and by doing so is (quite literally) stealing time from you. I’d venture to say his gender conditioning has made him feel more entitled to get off the hook, while your conditioning has you very much on the hook.

Now that I’ve touched on the political, let’s look at the personal. First, congratulations on the BCAC grant! Grants are so affirming and can really make an impact financially and on one’s creative life. As the applicant, you would’ve been asked to put forth a timeline for your project. I’m wondering if the timeline you proposed was realistic? It’s super common to over-estimate how much we can do in a certain amount of time, and there’s no shame in that. If that’s what happened, consider contacting your Program Advisor and asking for an extension. Or, perhaps there’s a separate or external reason why the project simply has to be done by October, in which case so be it. Either way, I want to talk about time with a strategic mindset now.

Over the next few months, I recommend being grounded in what your time is for. You could put it like this: self-care, mothering, job work, and creative work. Being clear about what your time (and vitality!) is for will act as a filter and will help you protect it. It’ll also remind you to set boundaries around distractions and any demands on your time outside of those core areas. This is not forever. This is how you’ll use your time until your project is finished.

Any way you slice it, you’ll never be able to do everything you think you need, want, or should do anyway, so accepting that is part of the battle. If this means you find yourself confronting a four-foot-high laundry pile at some point, I invite you to look upon it proudly and congratulate yourself for the liberatory practice of prioritizing creative work over muggle shit for as long as you could. This would also be an excellent example for your daughter. I love a clean and organized home myself, but if I’d been raised to know that it’s not a moral failing to let housework slide, I think I could’ve saved myself a lot of angst over the years.

Then there’s the nitty gritty of your conundrum—how much time do you actually have? What are the logistics of your time with your daughter? Can you, for example, disappear for 90 minutes (a good length of time for flow) and then reappear and spend quality time with your her (also allowing you to recover from your flow session and thus managing your dopamine)? Are there people in your life you can ask for help with childcare? Maybe there’s a friend or relative that can commit to one afternoon a week for the next few months. Or can you trade time with another parent so that they have your daughter one day and you have their child(ren) another day? I know it’s hard to ask for help, but remember the more you model asking for help, the more it empowers the folks around you to ask for help too. And it can be reciprocal or paid forward (especially after your October deadline)!

You also mentioned energy—as in “finding the time and energy”. As a chronically ill person, I think about energy a lot—how much I have, how to best use it, how to stay within my energy “envelope”, how to recharge, etc. I’ve learned that working within my capacity increases my capacity. That means that If I’m nodding off at my laptop, it’s time for fresh air or rest. If I have a work thing in the evening, an afternoon nap (or even taking the afternoon off and away from screens) will set me up for success. If I feel taxed by overwhelm or stress, a time out for meditation or a walk in the garden or to read or to connect with my husband is what gets me back to work in a generative way sooner than later. I used to “push through” but that just made me miserable, and I didn’t actually get that much more done. What I’m saying is do not deny yourself self-care breaks because you feel there’s no time or that a short break won’t make a difference. Self-care breaks will always increase your capacity. If you can include your daughter in those self-care breaks, even better because you will be helping her build skills to live with a more regulated nervous system in this world.

Finally, I just want to give you general encouragement. Being a single parent isn’t easy, nor is being an artist under capitalism. I don’t think most people understand how incredible it is that artists make art—including full-scale, complex projects—while being under-resourced and without the working conditions and “container” of jobs where there are set hours, regular pay, co-workers to provide support and accountability, and so on. If you ask me, artists are forking amazing and you’re one of them. If you find yourself wanting to beat yourself up over time and energy, please remember the personal and political context from which you’re operating and flood yourself with self-compassion. Like, seriously sit with yourself and feel your feelings and pour love all over them. Then carry on with the creative work that is so important to you and brings you home to yourself.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s time for my nap.

Good things,

Jill

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REFLECTION PROMPTS

Want to dig deeper into this issue’s topic in terms of your own creative practice? Make yourself a cuppa and grab a notebook and pen…

• In what ways has time been stolen from you?

• How much “free” time do you have?

• Does that free time ever feel “contaminated”, and if so, by what?

• What is your time for?

• How do you protect the time you have for your creative work?

• Have you prioritized anything over your creative work (like the laundry) that needs to be deprioritized?

• Is there any help you can ask for that will garner you more time?

• How are you working within in your capacity to increase your capacity?