Hours Partitioned by Patresa Hartman

I am grateful for time, but with only one eye open, and my teeth are most certainly clenched. For I wish to live timeless, limitless, rootless. I wish to free float and mingle eye-level with birds and hang gliders. I wish to hang glide without the cumbersome apparatus.

The notion is romantic to me, and I have always been particularly susceptible to romantic notions. Not the candle-light, hand-holding kind, but the impressionistic watercolor kind. The barefoot kind. The tall reeds and endless sky kind. I want to be whimsy on legs that barely touch ground. I want to fit nicely within the mold labeled Free Spirit.

It's childish; I know this. I do not like responsibility; "You," I say to whomever dares to impose order, "are not the boss of me." Then I limp home with twigs in my hair, pretending to be royalty and ridiculously dressed.

But as I grow farther from childhood, I understand that time is good to me. It is spinach -- canned nemesis when I was six, nine, and eleven; now appreciated fresh sautee'd with pine nuts at thirty-four.

There is never enough; there is too much; there is exactly and precisely the correct amount. I shake my fist at you, Time, because you are always right, and it is infuriating.

An educator, I am saying goodbye to summer and its three months of delicious aimlessness. I will set my alarm on Monday, and my body will reaccustom to jarring Awake-Right-Now-ness. The hours of wander are waning, and I mourn.

But I understand -- teeth clenched, allow me to remind -- that it is a worthwhile transition. When I pull the twigs out of my hair and let go of childish notions of who I want to be, I have come to understand what I am. I do better with structure, with increments of hours partitioned between to-do lists. I feel safer; I create more; I beat myself up less; and the kitchen is always cleaner. With too much time on my hands, I sink into stupors and waste.

Time, as all wise grandmothers, understands the need for boundaries. Cry as forlorn summer-loving children might, she remains steadfast, unconditional to provide exactly for our needs when all we do is want want want.

*Find an audio recording of this post, read by the author, at the bottom of the page in Rose & Thorn's podcast.

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Leisure Time by Nannette Croce

Leisure time. It used to be what people aspired to. It was the last rung of the ladder. The “leisured” class.

When did it change?

Now the measure of success is how “busy” you are. How many cell phone calls you need to squeeze in before the plane takes off. How many times you need to check your Blackberry while on vacation. People complain about new technology putting them constantly on call, but I have often suspected that if silence were to break out, panic would set in. Am I not indispensable? Am I no longer important?

In support of this I can state, unequivocally, that it did not begin with the tech boom. A couple of decades ago I learned the hard way that when the manager said, “Don't call unless the building’s on fire” one should not ignore the wink and nod. Being constantly interrupted with "important" business matters lent a certain cachet. I even fell prey to it myself once or twice, making “You forgot to leave me those spreadsheets to type” into "another fire to put out" in the eyes of my traveling companions.

Not anymore. Call me crazy, but I appreciate my leisure time. At my last job, contacts wanted my cell number and personal e-mail to access me 24/7. Yes, I could have seemed very important, taking calls at my kid’s school play, but I wasn’t important. I had a part-time slightly above minimum wage job, and nothing really mattered so much it couldn’t wait one more day. Amazingly, my contacts learned to accept that. No one’s world fell apart, and I hung onto my now much appreciated leisure time.