Productive

In a conversation recently about what was most important to us and how we want our lives to play out, a friend mentioned how eventually she wanted to live someplace outside the country. This was nothing new for me to hear; we had both studied abroad in the same Irish city and not surprisingly we both wished we’d never left. So we’d discussed decisions like this before and what led us to them, but it was how she said it this time that got the gears moving:

"I would rather live in a foreign country. Where everything isn’t about money and productivity, but about living, and beautiful things...."

I equate productivity, being productive, with things like self growth, doing what things you have to do, following up on all the things you wanted to.

Waking up reasonably early. Cleaning up, maybe tending to the yard. Some exercise, probably. Maybe further a relationship you may have only just kindled with someone, or spark an entirely new one. Make a call to a family member or friend you haven’t talked to in months, maybe even over a year. Finish a book, or start one, the one you’ve been meaning to read. Gain some ground on a personal/professional endeavor; a sketch of a building if you’re an architect, a series of snap-shots if you’re a photographer. If you’re an aspiring writer like me, maybe peck away at a short story, poem, or the "manuscript."

(That’s an intimidating word, manuscript...)

Give something away you don’t need. Hack away the things that no longer serve you in any way, and continuously add something that does. Leave a footprint in the sand, a positive impression on the world, or in someone’s life. (Earning a living probably fits into this model somewhere.)

The brand of productivity my friend seeks, as many of us do, to liberate herself from is of the "assembly line" variety, concerned with figures, statistics, money and status.

Lately a lot of us have been in survival mode just trying to keep our heads above the water, seeking independence without drowning in debt and the cost of living.

In this country, you are what you own. For many, self-worth is Codependent on net-worth.

*Sigh* If you’re gonna be broke, ya better be cute… (I look at my receding hairline and shudder lately...)

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I think what it comes down to is filling the hours and minutes with as much learning, growing, and of course, sharing as possible.

Time is NOT money. I want to personally desecrate the grave-site of whoever coined that insipid phrase, because those who truly subscribe to that ethos do NOT actually utilize their own time—they monopolize the time of others.

I began working in a Barnes & Noble recently, and sadly my time, like the time of my coworkers, supervisors and managers is just a currency generating tool for a bunch of corporate fat-cats who sit in a board room somewhere in New York City and who definitely don’t give a shit about literature or spreading the "word" around.

It’s not just us either, but every consumer who walks through the big glass doors and consigns the minutes or hours of their day to that store. The customers always suspect they are being screwed somehow (though it doesn’t actually stop them from pissing their money away.) They are probably right, but they should channel their angsty frustration and collectively broadcast it to that Manhattan office building instead of slinging individual dirty looks, snide comments and other venom-tipped arrows in our general direction.

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I’m not suggesting we boycott bookstores or anything in general. I in fact...love bookstores. If Glade made a "new book," or "wafting café aroma" scented plug-in, I’d have one in every outlet of my house.

Consider the suit-clad people in that conference room: even if their suede pockets are lined deeper than ours, in the end, their time isn’t theirs, and all time on this earth is small time isn’t it? With so much energy focused on financial and material gain, holes start to form.

Creative; spiritual; interpersonal; romantic.

Throwing money at a gaping void in life never was the best way to fill it. Besides, it runs out. Well, for most of us, anyway. Still there are a lucky few with inexhaustible trust funds, bankers whose alternate clientele include exiled royalty and arms dealers, and credit cards with platinum status that put Michael Jackson’s Thriller to shame.

Before you get envious, remember that they will continue to shovel that money through that black hole of little to no return like coal into an insatiable fire.

No, time is not money. What is done with it in the end, frugal or frivolous is inconsequential. Time is LIFE. How do you SPEND yours?