Time marches on - or does it?

All the prompts from last week's writing circle

Hey friends,

On Friday, I held our first Lemonade Factory Writing Circle.

It was all about pausing and examining our relationship with time - something that feels extra poignant as we cross the threshold between the first half of this year and the second.

The creek by my house finally started flowing on winter solstice morning. I love how the ebbs and flows of this land offer me a different way to track the passage of time.

Time is such a strange concept. It’s something I love to ponder and have previously written about (here, here, here, and here).

I find it all fascinating, from the invention of water clocks and incense clocks, to how the British put off the adoption of the Gregorian calendar for 170 years, just to spite the Catholic Church.

It’s also something I’ve become more intimately acquainted with these past few years. There’s nothing like dementia to reconfigure your perception of time; it becomes both a cruel and comforting reminder that everything is always changing. Always in flux.

I also find it incredibly interesting how our perception of time can change, depending on where we grew up and our idea of “normal”. How differently time can move for all of us.

We don’t even perceive it in the same way - some cultures view it in circles and spirals, in deaths and rebirths, others, like mine, in a straight line, with a firm beginning and a firm end.

I prefer the softer approach.

And so, in this month’s writing circle, I invited us to take a peek into our relationship with time.

I find fire is always an invitation to ponder time differently, too. Especially as the land in the photo above was destroyed by a bushfire just 15 months ago.

I thought it would be nice to share the questions here, along with a poem to ponder.

I usually write a list of questions and then pick 2-3 to cover in the circle. In this case, I’m going to share them all and then pull out the ones we explored more deeply.

If you’d like to journal on them but struggle to show up for the page, then you’re welcome to try “body-doubling” by watching one of my co-working replays from our Lemonade Factory Calls.

Spoiler alert: there’s a lot of strange Cassie concentration faces.

Of course, if you’d prefer to join us live, you’re also welcome to join us in the next writing circle (Friday 25th July at 12pm BST) or bring these questions to one of July’s co-working calls (Monday 7th July at 9.30am AWST or Thursday 17th July at 10am BST).

We can dive into them together on the page during our co-working call, and unpack in our coffee-break chat after.

To join, you just need to upgrade your subscription to either a monthly plan (£8/month, cancel anytime) or an annual one for £50/$100AUD.

More details here.

Alright, let’s dive in.

First, a poem by one of my forever favourites, Mary Oliver.

Invitation

Oh do you have time
to linger
for just a little while
out of your busy

and very important day
for the goldfinches
that have gathered
in a field of thistles

for a musical battle,
to see who can sing
the highest note,
or the lowest,

or the most expressive of mirth,
or the most tender?
Their strong, blunt beaks
drink the air

as they strive
melodiously
not for your sake
and not for mine

and not for the sake of winning
but for sheer delight and gratitude—
believe us, they say,
it is a serious thing

just to be alive
on this fresh morning
in the broken world.
I beg of you,

do not walk by
without pausing
to attend to this
rather ridiculous performance.

It could mean something.
It could mean everything.
It could be what Rilke meant, when he wrote:
“You must change your life.”

~ Mary Oliver

Questions to ponder

1. How would you describe your relationship with time? Can you put words to it? If it were human, would it be a good relationship? Is it supportive? Is it rushed or messy?
   

2. What shape does time have, to you? Is it a spiral? A straight line? A circle? Something else?
   

3. What does an ideal day look like to you? Where would you go fast? Where would you linger? What would you skip? What would you stretch out?
   

4. What makes you wish your days away?
   

5. What makes you wish you could slow them down?
   

6. What things get you into flow state? This might be creating, playing, or reading in the bath, for example.
   

7. What seems to drag or last forever? Is there anything you intentionally drag out and put off? This might be ironing or cleaning or opening emails you don’t really want to deal with.
   

8. If you could stop the clock, what would you do?
   

9. If you could fast-forward time, like an old-school VHS movie, where would you want to be? What would you want to have done, or under your belt?
   

10. How does it feel to imagine yourself skipping forward? Of all the things you’d miss out on. Does it feel good to have achieved the thing you want? Is it worth the sacrifice?
    

11. How do you feel about time now?
    

12. Is there anything that you’ve realised you want to change about your relationship to time? Anything you want to prioritise or focus on? Anything you want to push back or put off for longer? Anything you might change as we step into the second half of the year?

Obviously, there are some quite big questions there, so here’s a palate cleanser of some nice rocks.

Every time I’m here, I find myself thinking about how long these rocks have been here and all the floods and droughts they’ve weathered.

Alright. So, in the call, we ended up covering just three of these questions:

1. If you could stop the clock, what would you do?

2. If you could fast-forward time, like an old-school VHS movie, where would you want to be?

3. How does it feel to imagine yourself skipping forward? Of all the things you’d miss out on. Does it feel good to have achieved the thing you want? Is it worth the sacrifice?

The answers were surprising. I wonder if yours will be, too.

Feel free to share in the comments, as always, or drop me a line if you want to explore this further.

Before I finish up for today, too, I also wanted to extend an invitation to my 1:1 creative mentoring practice.

I’ve been running a muddly mid-year special which officially ends today - June 30th - although as this is going out a little later than anticipated, I will extend it to anyone who reaches out or books a free discovery call before tomorrow (1st July at midnight BST).

And if 1:1 is a bit of a stretch right now, know you can also join me in The Lemonade Factory and ask me any questions you may have there, too.

Alright! I’m off to go take the cat for a walk.

Sending you lots of love,

Cassie x

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• Join me for a 1:1 creative mentoring call where we can talk about all of this and more.

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