The Emotional Labour of Time

A timepiece on making peace with time and finding my median.

The demand for predictability, certainty, and even uniformity led to the invention of time. Regardless of whether we display a neurodivergence, such as being autistic like me, many of us flourish within such predefined functionalities. Where do I begin when there is so much to discuss and so little time? The irony is bittersweet. Let's speak about how, as an autistic person, I can experience time awareness and blindness and how finding my median can be challenging. The all-or-nothing nature of autism is something that many who experience it will understand well.

Even though I enjoy consistency, routine, and anything time-related, I have a complicated relationship with time due to processing and executive function challenges. I am either all in or out. Fully time-aware, running on time, or completely time-blind, running out of it.

My hypervigilant-time awareness

In my moments of all in my all-or-nothing, pedantic time-based rituals have been a part of my time obsessions —obsessive ducks-in-a-row kind of stuff. These rituals have included planning food preparation and consumption down to the hour and methodically planned daily schedules from am to pm. Gym programs are timed with reps, sets, rest, and tempo precision. Clothes are organised into weekly wardrobes and laid out in my line of sight the night before I have to wear them—everything becomes automated. If any deviations from my time-based schedule occur, my day?is?ruined.

The Waiting Game

If I have to be somewhere, I do this because I cannot be this person; it's just part of my whole self. I go into waiting mode and play the waiting game. Although waiting mode is not specific to neurodivergent people, it is significantly more debilitating for those who already have difficulties with executive functioning.

It depends on the situation or event, but if I know I have to go somewhere or be there at a particular time, I get frozen in time before that time, almost paralysed. Waiting mode is?when you can't get anything done because you're distracted by the awareness that you have something planned — such as an appointment — later on. Some Autistic or neurodivergent individuals may feel anxious, impatient, and overwhelmed. I find that the minutes and hours before are tediously irritating. I prefer that no one can talk to me for fear of them putting anything into my headspace that has the potential to divert my attention from the way the clock's hand is moving. Executive dysfunction, anxiety, time awareness, and blindness all come together for me when I'm in waiting mode in one big pro and con shit show.

I can experience it as an anxiety-inducing attention-regulation issue. But I have better strategies to deal with it now that I know why it occurs. Rumination and procrastination are not at all what it is. It is objective obsessiveness; I have to be there at such a time, and I am fixated on that only. Again, I will have carefully planned the entire process in a hypervigilant time ritual. Anything that deviates from or saturates the plan's details even slightly will make my head spin out of control, and I will then show up exhausted or, on occasion, cancel.

Since I've realised that waiting for the time to pass or to arrive is far too annoying for me and everyone around me, I tend to arrive far sooner than anticipated. By that, I mean around one or two hours earlier. Naturally, after that, my inner critic shows up to point out everything I could have accomplished in the one or two hours I now have to spare as I sit there waiting patiently, impatient. Therefore, I am rarely late for anything, which translates to difficulty processing other people's lateness. Of course, this has led to many?misunderstandings and conflicts since I take it personally, embody it emotionally and then experience my autistic wrath at the thought of someone potentially disrespecting?my time. I have been known to cry if someone forgets our plans or is excessively late. It is almost akin to experiencing lateness as an emotion in its own right.

I have had to put in some emotional detachment effort to let go of this. It's important to note that I certainly do feel empathy for people when they have delays due to human nature; it's simply that I need to fully absorb everything, like all the details, to process it before I can get past my feelings to understand theirs. And yes, this has been perceived as self-centred and inconsiderate, and admittedly, I have been quite direct, harsh, and demanding about others' lack of?punctuality. However, that past is in the past, and I forgive myself and them for such incongruent ideals.

I'll provide a work example to put this in context. Someone I was due to have a business meeting with a few years ago?arrived over two hours late for our?morning?meeting because they didn't thoroughly plan their route through the traffic or account for probable delays. That is?pedantically incomprehensible in my brain because, in my hypervigilance, I typically and atypically?have researched routes, anticipated delays, and all possible eventualities. I informed them I would never endorse their services to anyone due to their delay. I never have, too. Ouch. As I place so much (and too much) value on time, which I have recently realised, a circumstance like this has violated one of my core principles. I am working through this piece to arrive at a more conscious median and philosophical reframing for my relationship with time in my thoughts. Naturally, I have done some emotional detachment and empathic work on these scenarios to consider that this individual may have had their own time blindness and executive functioning issues to overcome, even if they were distinct from mine. Double empathy should work both ways as neurodivergent people with neurotypical people, too. That is assuming this person was neurotypical, of course.

In other life events of time pedanticism, I arrived ten minutes early for my wedding. My entire bridal party operated like clockwork, with all the planning and scheduling done perfectly. I encountered?last-minute guests rushing past me as I was about to walk down the aisle. The celebrant noted it was their first wedding ceremony where a bride was early. The uncertainty and stress that would have developed in that situation—keeping someone you love waiting—as well as the idea that someone would consider themselves to be that significant or loved to do so—were beyond my capacity to understand.

In my other compulsions, I accumulate watches I seldom wear. I regard them as works of art. And since I love art, I designed myself a full-side rib?tattoo of a timepiece that depicts time waiting for no one as a candle burning at both ends sits on top of an hourglass timer and?releases sand into a skeleton's skull. It took hours to complete as time waited for someone (me) in what was quite a time-sensual, sensory-seeking moment in my at the time unknown, autistic sensory-seeking brain. Leather recliners, tattoo needles, and Kaytranada playlists are my background noise. Don't knock it, shall we? Why is getting a tattoo enjoyable for some of us? It's all in the endorphins, which have the same effects on your brain as painkillers and are highly addictive. The main distinction is that when you get a tattoo, your brain naturally releases endorphins; you are not introducing a new hormone or drug into your system. Don't be surprised if you notice that many neurodivergent folk have tattoos.

Natural time-released painkillers kill time within sensory joy.

My Hypo Time Blindness

Time Agnosia or (Time blindness) is the term used to describe how people with ADHD and autism don't have a strong sense of time passing naturally. This disrupted relationship with time might cause us to misjudge time, such as when we get hyperfocused and hours seem to fly by, or it can make it difficult to predict how long tasks will take. My pedantic hypervigilant time awareness to avoid being late is the only thing my time blindness will never change. Never am I late! I call that my time neurosis.

In my moments of nothing in all or nothing, I cannot quantify the number of hours in a day, and I "do" operate oblivious to the hands on the clock. My "do" can take the form of completing excessive tasks, such as turning in a Master's thesis three months early from hyperfocus while oblivious to time, or it can take the form of this…

Daydreaming, gazing into space, losing hours of interoceptive sense checking in translation, and attempting to communicate myself to myself in my autistic language. Without a start, middle, or end. Some people's perspectives of time or of the time famines they create for themselves may make it seem like I also have much free time.

'You have too much time on your hands'. Something that has been regularly said to me. I don't have enough hands in my presence to control my time better, but there you go. Imagine in an ideal world if someone said to you.

'You have too many hands on your time'.

Could you throw another few hands on the clock there while you are at it?

Have you ever been made to feel bad because someone else's time moved more quickly than yours?

The Momentum Myth

In my episodes of time blindness, it feels like time exists in a separate dimension to me, a myth, but there is also momentum. Let's consider the "momentum myth", which may persuade aspiring individuals or pedant-time vigilantes like me that failure results from not making a constant "up and to the right" progress plan or schedule?towards their objectives. For context, I have started multiple fitness regimens over the years, intending to exercise five times per week, shedding pounds and enhancing my health. I adhere to this demanding schedule for the first two weeks. After that, life appears. I become busy at work, my family are involved in activities and needs prioritising, and I may get sick. I dropped two workouts the following week and only one the next week. I become discouraged, chastise myself for not following the plan, and ultimately give up, claiming that I have "lost momentum." It was a true story for years until I discovered weight training was something I could stick to.

But all of what I described is another perspective of time blindness; the hours escape us, and we run out of time or at least we think we do because we feel we have lost momentum or have we?

Moving back and forth as you approach the finish line or your objective is acceptable and perfectly typical in my atypical. None of us are machines. Sometimes, we feel bored, worn out, exhausted, or run out of ideas.

Lately, I am exhausted, and I have to learn to let go of my hypervigilance of the clock with more compassion for myself. Having no plan or schedule doesn't mean my time-focused progress will be wasted, invalidating all my previous work. Many know I have been an avid weight trainer for nearly ten years. I train 3 or 4 times a week, and lately, weeks have passed between going to train. It turns out that when I returned, I surprised myself that I was still as strong and, on some occasions, stronger.

Until this week…

A timely reminder

I have become increasingly aware of increased exhaustion catching up on me, and bang. On Thursday last, I experienced a meltdown when I found myself sobbing uncontrollably in front of an old Samsung hi-fi system I salvaged from my dad's that he had?purchased for me?when I was seventeen. I lay there?flat out (not time-related but exhaustion-driven) on my living room floor. I may have also been grieving for time while travelling back in time and playing old CDs —ironically on repeat Simply Red Holding Back The Years—and there I lay time blind under the effect of all this nostalgia.

On Friday morning, I awoke to find myself emotionally wrapped up in my duvet, with a sense of impending doom and having no desire to do anything. It felt?a bit like burnout. I know it well this past state of unwell. Realistically, burnout is still a possibility. As I write this, I still feel a deep sense of exhaustion. My time grief-stricken self feels like she has no filter. There is so much absorption, everything going in, nothing coming out—a familiar feeling from my late 20s to 30s that led to a chronic burnout of 11 years.

I was emotionally swamped in the emotional labour that is my love-hate time-aware and time-blind relationships combined with life's events, such as my husband’s recent open heart surgery and my other priorities as a part-time carer for my dad and my work.

And there I was flat-out floored with my head in between two big old hi-fi system speakers trying to speak to myself, but mute.

I took to my bed cathartically as a protective cocoon to shield me. Something in our Irish culture of shame here for years that would have had you labelled as psychiatrically unwell and written off. I don't tend to run away from my emotions. Still, I realised recently that I need to put a bit of space between my emotions and myself as my interoceptive self, in my episodic time blindness, can be challenging and energy deficit inducing as my brain loves to think and overthink philosophically of all the unknowns. Being autistic, I am familiar with these atypical brain drain deficits, which I can manage reasonably well with my regulating techniques. However, this deficit burn seems a little more substantial for me recently.

I have dropped a few balls.

Balls to that.

As I fully experienced in my bed on Friday morning, my brain fried when the exhaustion consumed my aching body, and my tears still flowed abundantly. And as I tried to find the words to explain it to a twin soul, they replied by text.

Are these not symptoms of burnout?

Yikes.

If I don't address it, this feels like an imminent burnout. I with an MA in Workplace Health and lived experience of chronic burnout with my blind-sightedness in my time blindness.

Ironic.

And so, I am choosing to be oblivious to time as a self-care strategy at present. As I age, I am becoming more aware that time blindness in many contexts, such as my gym absence example above, hyperfocus, more frequent episodes of daydreaming and more, is becoming a bit more of my whole self norm. Now, arguably, that could be a multitude of things, autism aside, or it could be entirely related to autism. I can't ever make distinct disassociation in this regard. However, I need to get to my more compassionate resolve here with my time challenges to resolve it more gracefully. FYI, Grace is my word now for the remainder of the year. From my experience of being excessively time-aware, I get the impression that, as I become older, contextual elements of my time blindness may occasionally be the least stressful option if I accept it as part of my entirety.

How about if my time blindness episodes were reframed as my median pause, or what if I could consider the beauty of moving away from time-based anxiety and even consider it as an independent divinity like Chronos in Greek mythology?

Because time is an abstract concept

There has never been or will never be a scientific experiment to demonstrate the existence of time. We all need a dimension and a sense to give it meaning. I also know that despite my love-hate relationship with time, I cannot speed up when others seem to be doing so, and conversely, I cannot slow down (my thoughts essentially) when I need to. Taking to the bed has advantages and disadvantages. By 4 p.m. on Friday, I had managed to free myself from the duvet emotionally, and I had begun writing this timepiece to attempt to make peace with time as the weekend got underway. When most people were getting ready to put the emotional labour of the previous week's work behind them, I sat down to start mine to find my median. The median pause will enable me to rest, refuel and navigate this period of dejection with some reflection.

It is also beautiful to observe the slower nature of how time is perceived across many cultures, something we can all learn from, like the Karen people of Thailand, where sunsets could be 'not far away'.

I recall climbing Croagh Patrick here in Mayo, Ireland, asking some more senior barefoot rock climbers how long there was left on their descent. The responses were 'not far away'.

I kept going.

If that came in response of two hours or more, I would have either sped up to beat that time and fatigued myself, possibly leading to an injury, or, on the other hand, I may have turned around and followed them, descending. It would have been a shame not to see the view at the top. To get to the summit was a purpose rather than a time-based achievement. I remember telling myself as I climbed that my mam would be so proud after my spinal surgery that I have this purpose defined and embraced cathartically.

As I get older,?I am becoming less inclined towards haste. It doesn't evoke the same feelings in me, like?resilience, as it did?in the past. Rushing here now as I age instils resistance. In the proper context, I am slowing down. My imminent burnout in my former days of excess rushing showed up to meet me as the grim reaper with its scythe in hand and sand hourglass timer. With much haste, I thought I was harvesting so much on one hand of the clock while chasing the other and cutting life short.

There is an idea for a new tattoo right there now!

And so, have I found a philosophical time peace reframe yet?

Well, philosophically speaking... Yes

This week, my 82-year-old dad claimed that time is no longer his enemy. He may not have much time left, and time seems to move faster as the world spins. But after a week in which time eluded me for various reasons—mentally, emotionally, and physically—and I engaged in my illogical time grief and shame behaviour with it, his words struck a deep chord within me. Now that I've gotten so reliant on time for predictability and assurance, I can see how it has become my enemy.

In his 1781 Critique of Pure Reason, the philosopher Immanuel Kant observed that time is the foundation of all our intuitions. In its absence, how do we make sense of the world, learn from lived experience, make decisions, or estimate how long a task will take? With reason, this is the reality for many of us, and with inevitableness, we submit and allow the hands of the clock to give us the power to "Just do it."

Random recall of the Nike 2015 advertisement encouraging you to find your fast.

Survival of the fittest?

Or the fastest?

What about the slow, slower or slowest?

Fast starts are never as important as a slower, more focused, defined purpose within our objectives, where we can wholeheartedly show up and commit to?a process, even if that means one week off and one week on.

But by making an enemy of time as I age and witness my dad grow old while still offering up his pearls of wisdom, I have managed to somehow convince myself in the uncertainty, unpredictability, and chaos that is the world we all experience now that, being time-aware and hypervigilant of my time equates to having purpose in my life and work.

And it doesn't.

I am letting time define my purpose. But because I can live my purpose embracing my entire autistic self, rather than the hours on the clock or the span of my life, it should not be constrained by my time in this mortal coil. Every day I am given the opportunity to breathe, I can embody this principle. It may be as simple as smiling at a stranger, recognising the good in others and sharing it, or as challenging as setting a personal record for my weightlifting and building slowly up to it. I don't need the hand on a clock to dictate any of those actions. I need a purpose within my entirety.

Nothing in my thoughts should be constrained by time or speed.

And so, if time is considered foundational to our knowing, being and doing of all things life and work-related, physicality defines how we perceive it. But if our purpose is foundational to our entirety as human beings, then maybe intangibility can help us redefine how we conceive it.

Letting go of time within reason.

What would you do with it if you had all the time in the world?

If time didn't exist, how would you exist?

In other words, how we perceive time might influence how we reinterpret what we seek as our purpose—adopting a mental state that allows conscious creativity to emerge while impervious to its physicalities and constraints.

Emotional labour outside of time

I don't recall watching the clock when I was at the height of physical labour, giving birth to my son 27 years ago. Ironically, I don't even remember how long it took between contractions. I bled, called the midwife, hopped in the bath, ate a sandwich, and then went to give birth—or I "do" life while giving life. Nike's 'Just do it' mantra has a conflicting meaning. Life progressed; I didn't speed up. The good stuff cannot be accessed with haste or finding our fast.

Things in life, like finding our purpose, can be worth slowing down for to find.

The emotional labour of time.

A labour of love.

The labour of love of doing something you love in defining your purpose. And like love, conscious creativity to access one's purpose needs much space and going slower to grow.

The emotional labour of time. But life and our hours of the day can seem longer even if potentially or tragically cut short when our purpose is more defined.

You see, perhaps the reason many of us let time dictate our sense of self and purpose by the hour every hour daily is that we are like upright chimps and apes, who are only content when beating our best times in our physical, mental, emotional, and defining purpose pursuits. And possibly, based on one's experience, that could be a very depressing way to view one's existence focused on how much we can accomplish in a day or even a lifetime rather than embracing an alternative progressive perspective of divination complementing the whole self externally to us.

My purpose is not time.

My time is not my purpose.

I've made the conscious decision to stop questioning what went wrong with how I spent my daytime hours each night before I go to bed and consider this instead.

What was strong within my purpose?

So this weekend and beyond, and until I recover from an impending burnout warning sign, from rushing, fretting, and juggling too many balls at once and trying to cram everything in 24 hours and subsequently crashing, will be a timeless event of using my hands for dog rubs and more hands-on, regulation-based stuff I do while abandoning the clocks hands.

Have a beautiful week ahead.

I will retreat from my LinkedIn feeds now to rest for a while as I have entered and split my mind quite frequently this past week, so thank you for the reads, shares and comments.

They are all appreciated and full of connectivity.

Here is a quick roundup to finish

The Self Advocating Autistic is a reader-supported publication. Please consider becoming a free subscriber or pledging your support for my writing on Substack.