Time, running away from me
The question is – and can you help me with this? – will some solid routines help me catch it?
Short, musing note to top this week’s newsletter (with a barely relevant illustration that appealed to me; one day I’ll tell you about my Nancy Drew books that I can’t throw away): I’m hoping you’ll share some thoughts with me to set me on a better path … think of it as crowd-sourcing a future newsletter! …
So, I’ve been having some neck/back problems for a few months now – often it feels like there’s a great big bloody mean-spirited goblin rumbling around inside my right shoulder and shooting off arrows of pain around the place … up my neck and down my arm. I’ve been to the physio, have some exercises (which I do, of course, only infrequently … does anyone do exercises physios give them?!), sometimes I work with a hot wheat bag slung over my shoulder, sometimes roll one of those hard physio balls between my back and a wall to try to loosen the spot. Don’t get time to get to yoga which I know would help (should be there right now, hi Suzi, but … writing this!), don’t sit properly at my desk (can someone explain why crossing my legs at my desk is such a compulsion?), don’t get enough time away from my desk, don’t take weekends, don’t take holidays, don’t have work-life-balance, don’t have a defined end to the work day or week, and, so forth.
But this isn’t a story about my back pain. It’s a story about time, routine, good habits and managing a working-from-home, self-employed, sole-trading life (or not managing it as the case might be) and how to do it better so I can earn a sustaining income while still making sure that my body, my being, doesn’t collapse under me. “You have to care for the means of production,” a business advisor once told me. “You are the means of production.” The means of production is creaky, needs a service.
So, back to my physio (the owner of the two-outlet business): he has been returning to my mind repeatedly since my last appointment (note: must book in another one). Can’t remember how we got on to the subject but as he dug his fingers into my shoulder he told me about his routine. 5am alarm; quickly into work to read the paper. Appointments etc; early afternoon finish and off to the gym. Same diet day in day out. Smoothie for breakfast (protein powder); big bowl of mince and a salad at the side for lunch; I’m guessing lean protein and veg for dinner. Repeat. (Yawn.) He has a kid or two; I did wonder about the balance of domestic labour at home. In any case, that routine is certainly the reason he owns a thriving two-outlet practice and ran a marathon recently.
The physio told me he gets antsy on holidays when his routine is out-of-kilter. I know other people who get anxious to the point of panic if they can’t stick to their routine.
But routine evades me, bores me. Besides getting Lola out the door first thing for Walk 1 around the block, making a coffee the moment we get home, then heading straight to my desk, I barely have a routine. Well, aside from bad routines … the coffee before getting food in my stomach (two this morning), the desk, the desk, the desk (although I’m writing this on the sofa, on the laptop), the eating two meals a day at the desk and the third typically on the couch, the devices including laptop in bed … I won’t go on. (OK, I’m being a bit tough on myself: I have been getting to the gym three or so times a week.)
Not surprisingly, I always have this humming, buzzing, panicky sense that time is running away without me, that outside forces are controlling me and I’m not controlling anything, that I’ve fallen before the finish line in my marathon race, that time is running away from me, an out-of-control train.
For work, I have been using a time-tracking app (Toggl) to attempt to record the hours I spend on different things and, while it has certainly concentrated my mind and ended dithering and social-media scrolling (only when the tracker is on), it hasn’t helped me prioritise, it hasn’t helped me get on top of my admin, it hasn’t helped me plan in any sort of strategic way and it has only heightened my anxiety about how fast time is running away. (Eg: “OMG, I’ve been working on this article for two hours and I’ve barely written 200 words and my brain is in a fog”. Or “OMG, I’ve just spent the past two hours clearing my inbox … in Toggl I have a label for that “non-billable work” … it’s GeneralEmailingReading and it consumes far too much time each day. And let’s not even start on the time spent trying to have a social media presence to “market” myself 😱🤢.)
Nor has Toggl helped me find a solution to the endless admin/finance stuff that needs doing. A fab woman who led a business-for-creatives “artselerate” workshop I took a couple of years ago said that, for her own business, she set aside each fortnight or so a “money day” which she spent on admin, finances etc; “great idea”, I thought, and immediately put it in my own calendar. The first “money day” sailed past me, I didn’t even notice it in my calendar, so immersed I was in working towards a deadline. The second one too. The result: the admin load builds and I end up having to spend days and days tackling it after I’ve hit a deadline rather than moving on to the next project swiftly (or taking a break).
And always, there is that sense that time is running away on me. It is September. Soon it will be Christmas. And I haven’t done X, Y and Z (work goals but also nice life things) that I really wanted to do this year and time is running away from me.
Is this just life today? Is this just the way we should expect life should be? (“Would we have believed them if they’d told us this would be life? We’ve been talking about ‘the grind’ and wondering when ‘the fun’ starts again,” a friend wrote me this week in an email … she and her partner have two kids … how people with kids do it is absolutely beyond me.)
Or is it the result of a life without sufficient routine and good habits and good time-management skills?
I am so interested in hearing what habits/routines/time-management processes you have that help you feel that you’re in control of your time, your destiny:
Are you a serious routine person or, like me, does it evade you? If you’re a creature of routine, what does that routine look like?
How do you feel about time? Does its slipping away terrify you as it does me?
If you’re self-employed, what tools do you use to manage things? What tricks have you found that lighten the load? How do you manage the finance/admin stuff? (I use Rounded for expense and invoicing management, although I think I need to learn to make Excel spreadsheets as I’m not sure Rounded offers all I need … but, then again, I haven’t had time to explore what it can do properly and there’s another issue … there’s never enough time to fully understand what various tools/apps etc do so I’m actually getting the most out of them – and my money’s worth! Of course I have an accountant who does my tax but there’s a stack to be done before that point.)
If you’re a writer having to corral huge volumes of material into long-form writing (as I have to for many of the projects I work on), what tools do you use to organise that material? (The main tools I subscribe to: Zoom for interviews which I record; Otter.ai to transcribe the recordings; Evernote mostly now for organising material and writing.)
If you have your work-life balance a little more under control, or if you’ve stepped away from work, what habits/routines do you have that give your life meaning or bring you joy even? How do your days look? How do you start them and finish them? (Recently I read of someone who starts every day in their garden with a cup of tea. Non-negotiable. I could do that. But the fear of losing work time pulls me to my desk instead.)
If you have managed to change your routine and habits and stopped worrying about things that don’t matter (my big ones: keeping my inbox down, housework), how did you do it?
And, if like me, you have to do your own housework, how do you save time on that?
I’d love to hear your insight and wisdom on this … with the outright practical or the whimsical and joyous. A sentence, a nugget, a thought even would be wonderful. I’m sure that the collective brain that reads Vamp will have some brilliant and helpful ideas. I’d love to build a list (let’s call it the “Vamp 50 Best Time Management Tips of All Time”!).
Either leave a comment here or email me (sw@stephaniewood.com.au) and, if you’d like your contribution to be anonymous, just let me know. (For this post I’m opening up the comments to everyone – paid and free subscribers! Hit me with them!)
Please help me resolve the tension between desiring to rest, to lie on my back under a tree and look at the sky, the need to work, and the fear that my allotted hours are slipping away.
🎵Mood
🎵Mood: I’m a member of a (frequently victorious) weekly trivia team (oh, OK, there’s another routine, a good habit I guess!). This was the answer to one of this week’s questions. It’s earworm now and won’t leave me. What a song!
Plus: If you’re new here, a few weeks back, to coincide with the release of Fake on Paramount+, the dramatisation of my book, I created a Spotify playlist bouncing off the series. You’ll find it here. (Plus, another which includes my favourite opera arias.)
Wild thing
From Melbourne, the peregrine falcon family has returned again to its Collins Street high rise. But, it seems, there is a new cast of characters. Dr Victor Hurley, the lead researcher of the Victorian Peregrine Project with BirdLife Australia, told Guardian Australia that “a different female falcon had taken up the nest on the ledge of the Collins Street skyscraper this year”. There is, apparently, an egg – and a livestream. Should you have time on your hands.
Reading
Social researcher Rebecca Huntley in The Guardian on undergoing MDMA therapy. “Tears streamed down my face for hours as I visualised and keenly felt what lay beneath all my anger. A deep sadness for both my parents, for all the pain they had endured as children and throughout their lives.” (Rebecca was also interviewed on ABC Conversations recently.)
Plus, also in The Guardian: the toll polycystic ovary syndrome takes, particularly on mental health. “The next morning I wrote in my journal, ‘Something is starting to shift with my mental health’. Throughout the entry, it’s clear I was confused and distraught. I pondered the same question ad nauseam: what is wrong with me?”
Adored this interview in Oldster magazine with 86-year-old retired psychologist and painter Bella Ruth Bader. “Every morning, I stretch for 20 minutes and jog around my bedroom for 10 minutes. I lift 5 lb. weights three times a week to keep my muscles strong, so they don’t disappear. Strength training also boosts my mood and helps me manage my stress better than coffee. Then I usually take a three mile walk up the hills in my town. If this sounds like a lot of work, that’s because self-care feels like a full-time job, especially in my 80s.” (What was I saying about good habits?)
In The New York Times, the woman who throws her frozen eggs a birthday party every year … “TikTok is full of women throwing and attending egg showers, in which they invite friends and family to celebrate their taking charge of their fertility futures.”
On the ABC website, how Vietnamese-Australians forged the nail-salon industry: “Mr Le owned a registered training organisation to upskill migrant women to work in nail salons, teaching them the basics of the craft and how to use new nail technology coming out of the US.”
A shocking story in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald … the father who killed his wife, then raised his children as though nothing had ever happened. “There weren’t photos, there weren’t stories, her name was never mentioned … The story that I was told was she had done this awful thing – he snapped, and then he had killed her. [It was] really framed as this sort of accident.”
Finally, settle in and enjoy this story about the revival of the Moleskin notebook – with its connection to the writer Bruce Chatwin’s 1987 book about Aboriginal people’s ancient “Dreaming tracks”, The Songlines. “Digging them out of old boxes, she looked at them for the first time in years – and with new eyes. Why had Chatwin become so attached to this particular model that he would order a hundred rather than risk running out? How could such a utilitarian object assume such importance?”
Watching
On ABC Australian Story from Monday night (September 9), a three-part series on Lachlan Murdoch. It will, I predict, be riveting, especially given that it’s to be presented by journalist Padding Manning, an expert on the Murdoch family. From the ABC’s press release about the series: “Manning’s fascination with the Murdochs, and Lachlan in particular, has led to him becoming one of the world’s leading authorities on the family. In this landmark series, he combines forensic investigative skills with a down-to-earth style to tell one of the great untold stories of our time.”
Plus: Loving this Gardening Australia segment which I’m half-watching while I write this week’s newsletter… what a great woman!
Plus, plus:
(via Instagram Threads; more here)
Plus, plus, plus: love a bit of loved-up. This is just great …
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Food
DISPATCHES FROM THE AEGEAN: This year, with so much joy, I have renewed ties with a great, dear old friend from my days working in Hong Kong. Carla now lives on the Greek island of Tinos in the Aegean Sea. We were WhatsApp-comparing our meals the other night. I shared a dodgy pic of my tofu skewers with peanut sauce (too dodgy to share here; I’ve been playing around with this recipe … it’s good, but think the peanut sauce can be improved and, god, the mess it’s made of my barbecue). Carla sent me a food-magazine-worthy pic of her lunch, reproduced here with her permission. I asked her what was in it: “Omg, so basic: Chopped fresh tomatoes, chopped fresh red onion (soaked in ice water to remove a bit of sting), black Kalamata olives, destoned, home picked pickled capers, dried oregano and gluggs of Greek EVO, bit of black pepper and Maldon salt on the toms. Didn’t have any cucumber, hence it’s a modified horiataki, or greek village salad. Garlic bread on the side. Danish teak salad bowl bought on Syros.” And Carla’s response when I swooned about her home-grown capers (below): “You can’t cultivate them, they just decide to grow. I guard it like gold.” Thank you my friend 💕
SOUP: Conceptually, and I urge you to check out the concept, this seems a super way to make a soup, especially if you had some ageing vegetable drawer specimens to deal with. You could equally finish it with cream, oh yes.
PASTA: Hetty McKinnon’s cheat’s ravioli – commercial ravioli with mint yoghurt, pine nuts and brown butter. Very appealing!
EGG CARTON DESSERT: Translation of ingredients: 1 empty egg carton; 1 egg; 120g fromage frais (a French fresh curd cheese, substitute perhaps Greek yoghurt or a combination of yoghurt and cream cheese); 1 vanilla pod; 1tbsp honey; 1 egg, beaten; puff pastry; 10-12 large strawberries; 1 milk chocolate bar (any one of these perhaps?). Haven’t tried it, looks pretty straightforward, could be great served with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream … but, what do you think … will that puff pastry stick to the egg carton and cause a great big mess?
PLUS, GRANOLA: I’m not much of a cereal lover but this granola looks excellent – using ripe bananas. (In the Paris-based, American chef David Lebovitz’s newsletter … run your eye through the edition to find the recipe.)
Travel
BRAZIL: Big gap in my travel history … South America. This might be enough to change that. Do watch this extraordinary video above. I’ve found a bit more about the Sucuriú River and its jumping-off town, Bonito … located in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul (closer to Paraguay than the capital Brasília, flights go into Bonito), landlocked but rich with underwater activities. Says Lonely Planet of the river:
“Rio Sucuri leisurely winds through verdant farmland, a natural lazy river that carries visitors through a watery wonderland; drift over gardens of gorgeous vegetation (you’ll see dayglow green, deep purple, and warm maroon variations), long riverbed grasses, and snail shells the size of your fist. The water itself is completely clear, which makes for easy fish spotting, including the red-tailed piraputanga, the smoky-colored pacu, and the hundreds of tiny fish flickering among the tree roots lining the shore.”
(And then, thanks Conde Nast Traveller … another half a dozen places here I’d like to visit in Brazil.)
BOLOGNA: Also in Conde Nast Traveller, a guide to the best restaurants in Bologna. “As the capital of the Emilia-Romagna, you’re bound to find the region’s finest ingredients appear on your plate as well, such as aged parmigiano-reggiano, balsamic vinegar, dry cured prosciutto di Parma and other lesser-known gems like culatello or fresh squacquerone cheese for fried “crescentine” dough pillows.” Plus: in Broadsheet, a food tour through the region. And, a downside, in The New York Times, a Bologna native laments the “tourist hell” her city has become. “For centuries the learned, the fat and the towers of Bologna were in beautiful harmony. Now the students have been uprooted, and the tower is in trouble. The fat alone reigns supreme. Must we really travel like this?”
BERLIN: Damn! Why didn’t I make a bigger effort to get to Berlin before some of my favourite people (hi S and A!) finished their posting there? I had no idea about the city’s indoor baths. A recent BBC article about the city’s more than 60 baths notes: “Hallenbäder first became popular in Berlin among the wealthier classes in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as a means to develop higher standards of personal hygiene at a time when few people had baths at home. But as it became clear that poor hygiene spread diseases, the city realised that there were civic and sanitary benefits to broadening the pools’ accessibility and granted access to lower classes as well, which is why they are also called Volksbäder, or the ‘people's pools’.” Hotel Oderberger, in which the public pool above, Stadtbad Oderberg, is housed, looks rather wonderful too. (Via the Design Museum’s Facebook page.)
NEW SOUTH WALES: Regular reader and regional publicist, Georgie Robertson, let me know this week of the newly launched regional tourism trail, “The Canola Trail”. The trail is halfway between Sydney and Melbourne and follows “the glowing fields of gold, from Temora to Coolamon to Junee, as the canola crop turns its face to the spring sunshine”. The choose-your-own-adventure trail takes in the cute little towns of the region as well as chocolate and cheese factories, hot-air balloon rides, cafes, bushwalks, antique shops and an aviation museum.
NORWAY: Lordy, I’d like a break here. “At Woodnest you will gaze out over the magnificent Hardanger fjord. With panoramic views of snow capped mountains, relax and watch the sunset, put your feet up and rest in the nest.” (Near the town of Odda, a five-hour-ish drive east-ish of Oslo.)
Home and garden
NIGEL SLATER: If you love to cook, you need to have a Nigel Slater cookbook on your shelf (or, have a bunch of Nigel Slater recipes bookmarked). What a treat then, to get a glimpse of his garden. God, an English garden. What heaven.💕
SOFAS: I need this information. You know you need this information. How to style a sofa. Thank god House & Garden magazine is on to the issue: “There is something very sad about a sofa upholstered in a plain fabric without a single patterned cushion to spice it up. The opposite is equally jarring – a sofa in a lively fabric without cushions to ground it can end up sticking out like a sore thumb.” Listen, I’ll be frank: I’m a cushion addict. Problem is, I keep buying cushions for my sofa that don’t work. I have a failed cushion graveyard in my spare/junk room. And my favourite ever, an expensive vintage-Japanese-patterned-silk-kimono-covered cushion, has frayed terribly around its edges. It’s over. It’s in the graveyard now too and my heart is broken. I need this House & Garden article more than you could ever know.
STOCKHOLM: It gives me a bit of a headache, but what an apartment! (More pics here. … they’re really worth looking at.) Pull out the adjectives: cheery, colourful, cosy, eclectic, whimsical, cluttered …
Fashion
IRIS APFEL: Posthumously, the release of “geriatric startlet” Iris Apfel’s book Colourful. From an excerpt in the Financial Times: “Everything is your attitude. When you think about things a certain way, you look a certain way. And I think that’s why I’ve never got the plastic surgery thing. It’s a fantastic invention if, God forbid, you’re in an accident or have some kind of trauma, but using it to get nipped and tucked and look younger . . . I don’t understand it. Sometimes when Carl and I went out, he used to look around and say, ‘Baby, you’re the only one here with your own face.’ To me, wrinkles are a badge of courage. There’s nothing wrong with them.”
BIBA: At the Fashion and Textile Museum in London, “the Biba Story”. “It evolved from selling clothing via mail order to offering everything from Biba-branded makeup to pet food and tins of baked beans from the sprawling seven-storey art deco building it occupied on Kensington High Street from 1973 until 1975,” says The Guardian. (London readers, quick! Exhibition closes September 8.)
Beautiful thing
Just stupendously beautiful … video behind this image … do watch it!
Socials
(Me every time I have to go out; via Instagram Threads … “story” here)
(via Instagram Threads, nope, she’s not buying what he’s selling)
(via Instagram Threads; more about the artist, Gary Taxali, here)
(via Instagram Threads, Melbourne-based Neil is a fine journalist and teacher)
(via Instagram Threads; more about the latest US mass shooting here)
(via Bluesky; Huffpost story here 🤬)
(via Instagram Threads; fun comments too … “We got a new vacuum on Friday and I was hitting the house like a 21-year old on a pub crawl”.)
(and then, all of a sudden, you’re appreciating embroidery while watching ABC Gardening Australia; via Instagram … lovely video!)
Stolen words
“At my age, in this still hierarchical time, people often ask me if I’m ‘passing the torch’. I explain that I’m keeping my torch, thank you very much – and I’m using it to light the torches of others. Because only if each of us has a torch will there be enough light.”–Feminist/activist Gloria Steinem in a 2014 article in Ms. magazine.
So thrilled to have had so many great comments on my post about time, time running away, habits, routine etc! Meanwhile, just spotted this on The Guardian website .... https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/article/2024/sep/08/streak-daily-ritual-can-enrich-your-life-or-become-unhealthy-obsession ... to build a new routine/habit ... is maintaining a streak the way to go!? "... our love of streaks taps into something primitive within us. Humans, she says, love streaking because of a concept called loss aversion. 'Humans are often more motivated by the fear of losing something than by the prospect of gaining something new'.”
I think the important question to ask yourself is if something serious was to happen to your health and you hadn’t done the things you wanted to or that brought you true joy, would you be besieged by regrets?
If the answer is yes, you need to make changes now and reverse the narrative.
No one is irreplaceable and if you stop people pleasing and only please yourself, time will become your friend and you will fill it with things that make YOU happy.
You can buy a lot of things but you can’t buy time.