Warp Time
It's a Journey - Thought Snack #90
Recently, I was teased for being a work-aholic. It threw me off. Work has never really been a defining characteristic of my personality. I’ve always been good at trying new things, going to new places, and exploring different aspects to life. My adventures have always given me a bajillion things for people to connect with me over.
The comment stuck with me for days. I have been working a ton. I’m launching a new business vertical and the cross-functional nature of the role is testing me at things that I’m not already excellent at. I’m having to put in a ton of time to coordinating complex initiatives across a number of teams while the requirements keep changing.
I had such an “oh shit” moment that when I began writing this post, I had planned to title it “I think I might be boring now…”.
The reality is that I’ve been doing a bunch of fun things with my time. Yes - there’s a lot of work, but I’ve been playing softball, taking pottery classes, photographing birds, and organizing Spikeball/pickleball games.
In my head, the issue isn’t that someone called me a workaholic, it’s that I believed them.
I was surprised how quick I was to turn on myself. Over the last year, I’ve found my recall going to the gutter and I’m not able to remember the things that I’ve been doing. I think it’s the time warp effect of too many things happening too quickly with no time to process.
Decompress Time
The problem for me is that I don’t think I know what decompression time looks like for me. I generally don’t like to sit still. I don’t think I count watching tv shows as decompress time. Especially when I don’t have much unscheduled time, I feel the scarcity and pressure about using my time wisely. Not doing anything feels like wasting time.
This philosophy towards spending my time isn’t new to me. I’ve always tried to pursue different activities and adventures with my free time. It’s not clear what makes some periods feel more coherent.
When I think back to periods of my life where I felt like I had a wrangle on warp time, it was when I had unstructured time in space, or time in new environments.
Long meandering walks gave me opportunities not only to explore the city and experience new things, but also to get lost in my thoughts and find patterns in the world that spurred my thinking.
It was on these walks that I got the idea for my sugar cane stand, came up with so many of my blog topics, interacted with strangers and learned about cool things that they are into. Though I was still “doing things”, I felt like my brain had an opportunity to breathe and work in different ways. To me, this is energizing.
In contrast, a lot of the hobbies I’ve been trying in Austin have been much more structured and narrow. Though I’m meeting new people in softball and pottery, the setting in which we interact is quite restricted. It’s hard to engage in deep conversation when we are trying to simultaneously cheer on our teammates or trying to learn how to throw clay.
Some of my more unstructured moments over the last few months are also the most memorable. A casual hot chocolate adventure with Emma found us getting recruited into a hippie cult at a cacao elixir cafe. Harry and I chatted wandered upon a farmers market with a dude (who is totally CIA) selling imported Iranian rugs out of a shipping container. These types of things get me fired up, and they occurred with such happenstance.
I am thinking about how to put myself in situations like this more often. I want to spend more time being silly. This year, I’ve felt my mojo start to come back. I’ve been chatting with strangers, finding myself in silly situations, and trying new things. Just yday I learned how to play Mahjong because Joy showed up at my door unannounced at 8:30PM and said we had somewhere to be. I’m very excited about it.
If I had to give you a list of some of the random things I want to do, it might look like this:
Jump off the bridge into Barton
Off the cuff drive to Big Bend
Wakeboard in Lake Austin
Get my scuba certification
But I guess to plan these out is precisely against the point. I should continue to wander through time and space and see what I come across. I can find people who also like adventure and will have more hangouts with friends that don’t have a set goal or an end time.
See u in the streets, homies!
Don’t forget to smile today :)
Thejas
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