It’s been almost a year already. I’ve left my comfy, yet rolling down the hill, fulltime job and started my own writing company. I can’t describe how good it feels to be my own boss, make my own decisions and decide to not pick up my phone whenever I feel like it. However, I never imagined that the same terror I had escaped from would find it’s way back into my life so quickly: the terror of time.

I should explain this a bit more thoroughly. After all, we can’t know any concept if it isn’t well defined.

You see, at the company I worked for we had this system to register our hours. Isn’t wasn’t really designed to check whether people actually worked their obliged eight hours a day, but more to see how many hours were spent on which client. However, it soon became a burden for almost everyone. How do you keep track of what you do when you spend half a day running through the office instead of behind your computer? How do you register a quarter of an hour correctly if you’ve spent it calling a customer, finishing an e-mail to another client, meanwhile helping out one of your colleagues and writing a note for another one? Yes, those were the days. Glad it’s over, to be honest.

But then I found out that, to apply for some quite profitable tax rules, I had to put a certain amount of hours in my company. Furthermore, it’s pretty wise to keep track of the amount of hours you spend writing for your clients anyway in order to bill them correctly. What else was I supposed to do than download a free version of the same system I had grown so accustomed to?

And so the terror of time came back into my life.

History tells me I can’t handle this kind of terror well. I transform into a time fearing robot that can’t do anything but run faster faster faster, just to please the time machine. What about this conversation for instance?

“Matt, I’ve just calculated the hours I’ve spent for my company thus far and it isn’t enough!”
“How do you mean? You seem pretty busy to me…”
“Yes I am, but not all is for my company and if I go on like this I’ll be like fifty hours behind on schedule once the year is done.”
“Honey, it’s nearly midnight, we should go to sleep…”
“Panic!”
“Don’t worry about it. You spend plenty enough time on your company, not just during working hours. For instance, this talk we are having, it’s work related, isn’t it?” Matt tries to sooth me.
“Good point! I’ll register these minutes immediately,” I reply while I jump out of bed to open my laptop, leaving Matt puzzled and slightly annoyed.

You see, I just want to please the terror of time so badly, that I forget to simply be happy with my lovely job. Just like a year ago. Apparently one can take the person out of the terror, but never the terror out of the person.

Matt and I, we were going to have a serious talk about this soon. Our three week road trip would probably have been a good moment to come up with ideas on how to make my work more fun and less straining and how to kill that time monster in my head. But then, during the last week before our holiday, something changed…

It wasn’t even Matt’s own fault, he had no real intentions of creating this situation. We only have Matt’s boss to blame. My ‘manager-of-department-at-fast-growing-commercial-company’-boyfriend had another formal job evaluation. Apparently Mr. Boss was very happy and pleased, because he gave Matt a raise both of us still can’t fully believe or comprehend…

From this day on I can quit working whenever I please. Whatever money I’ll been making, it’s like emptying a bottle of water in the sea. That doesn’t mean I’m going to pull the plug out of my company. It’s just that purely financially it has stopped being such a big deal. Matt has given me the opportunity to finally find happiness in my job, without having to worry about time. From this day on, time has lost its grip around my throat. From this day on, terror of time, YOU will be the one that’s always one step behind.

Column published by Cecile on Monday, July 7th, 2008.

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