Time Keeping - 013

Written By Jake Kahana

“Summer Reading” Gif illustration by Alex Green

 

Hey {Friend}

We took Golda on a trip to LA this past month. On the flight home, a flight attendant asked how old she was. "14 months next week,” Lauren and I replied in unison. 

Golda’s at the age where she's pointing to things and saying yes and no for what she wants; she has her own shorthand language for objects and food; she can walk and squat down to pick things up. That’s typical for a 14 or 15 month-old. Before I had kids, I was always annoyed by counting in months. Suddenly I have to do math to figure out how old this baby is? 

Now as a father, I understand that we count age in months until about 24 (sorry for the math; 2) because there are developmental milestones, firsts, and regressions associated with each one. The more we break down time, the more we’re aware of the change that happens, and what to keep track of. And what we track is how we spend our days and our lives. 

December is wrapping up and January brings not just a new month or year but also new decade. With that on my mind, and with the constant math of how old Golda is, I’m hyperaware of time keeping–how we track and measure our time and, consequently, how we use it.

Let’s end the year and the decade reflecting on ways that we keep time. 

Happy snacking.

 

Mural and Installation by Seth

 

I. The Beginnings are in The Ends

When the first calendar was created, time was tracked on a lunar calendar and New Years celebrated during the vernal equinox in the Spring. Then along comes Julius Caesar, who in 45 BCE under the guidance of astronomer Sosigenes, implements the 12 month Solar calendar with leap years, which begins on January 1.  

Why January? The intention was to honor the god Janus–who had two faces, and was thought to embody a new year–looking both backward and forwards at the same time. 2065 years ago, Caesar could have just as easily stated that we should mark the new year on the longest day of the year and suddenly, we’d be used to celebrating New Years on the beach. 

How we mark time is somewhat arbitrary, but it does matter in how we perceive our own life.

Let’s take a step back and look at our lifespan: one continuous timeline with only one end. Tens of thousands of days and hours strung together one after the other. Our entire time in high school was about 35,000 hours. The average weekend is 63. It can be hard to fully grasp how much time that is and how much life we actually have to use and live.  

So in order to process our lives—to tell our stories and reflect on what is happening to us— we break our timelines into chapters. And interestingly, we all do it differently. 

Sometimes it’s in calendar years and months. 

But sometimes it’s in eras: A job. Relationship. House. School. President. 

Or before/afters: Moving. Death. Marriage. Divorce. Parenthood.

Or seasons: Ski season. Busy season. Summers away.

How did you spend your weekend? How do you divide your 20s? These are the stories that add up to form our lives, each one with  markers that define the ends and beginnings of the chapters of our lives. We chose to accept the job and become parents. We did not choose to be broken up with or have someone die. Sometimes we make the choice and sometimes the choice is made for us. When it comes to our life’s stories, we are both the perpetrators and victims. 

The calendar merely gives us one way to mentally mark our lives. December 31 is an arbitrary date for us to reflect on a 365 day period. But it doesn’t have to be a marker of an end in our lives. Just because the calendar says December 31, we might not be at the end of anything big in our lives. Don’t rush to the next thing. We are all going through something. We are all still in the middle.

 

“Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago” by  Resh Ryan

II. Be Careful What You List For

I’ve never lived in San Francisco, but in the Summer of 2013, I came close. While I paid rent in LA, I lucked into a contract job at an ad agency in SF. So for 5 weeks I rented an AirBNB and pretended to live there. 

Knowing my time was limited, I made an extensive list of all the things I wanted to try– from restaurants and bars, hikes and museums. And from my first day there, I was crossing something off at least once, sometimes twice a day. Weekends were packed. But halfway through the month, I came to the realization that I had made a huge mistake. 

One night, I had plans to visit a popular restaurant called Beretta, looking forward to the famous squid ink pasta and gnocchi. That night we worked late and the agency bought us all dinner. Nevertheless, as a diligent list-crosser, I left the office determined to eat at Beretta. When I got there, the wait was almost 2 hours. (But I was there! Who knew when I would be back?) So instead of waiting for a candle-lit table and enjoying the ambiance, I ordered the famous squid ink pasta and gnocchi to-go, waited 20 minutes and took it home. Already feeling stuffed from the dinner at the office, I forced my way through my second dinner, lukewarm out of an aluminum box on a coffee table in an under-decorated stranger's apartment, alone. 

It was the low point of those 5 weeks. Especially because I had expected that crossing off everything on my SF would lead to some sort of peak experience, like I could “ win time."

Since then, I’ve rethought the purpose of a list. A life list (bucket list) or travel list are much different than a daily to-do list. The latter is about crossing things off as quickly as possible. But the former is about actually experiencing the thing and adding depth to our lives and layer to our character. If we treat these bigger lists like to-dos, the list fights the experience. So often we get to the end of our list and realize that we didn’t have the experience we hoped for. 

We make life lists or travel lists to try and live more fulfilling lives. To experience things that we believe will add meaning to our lives, make us better or more interesting people, and to have a story-worthy life.  In order to distinguish between the list we make and the experience we want, we ought to start with defining the experience we want first.

One thing I do every year is pretend that it is December 31st, of the following year. I reflect on the year as if it’s already happened. Free writing the feelings and experiences I want, I spend at most two hours getting everything down. In that time, I often write two or three versions of it so that it feels more real. From there, I use that story of the year to generate a list of goals that more accurately matches the experience I want.

As we sit down to plan what we want to accomplish and do in 2020, or on our next trip, or the rest of our lives, we often start with a list. But rushing into making a list can be just as much a mistake as rushing into completing it. Defining the experience we seek can help us avoid the emptiness that comes with getting to the end of the list and realizing we didn’t get what we came for.

Aside: Check out my SF Map I make a new color-coordinated map of every city I travel to, complete with reviews of the sites. TheListMaps.com is the complete list of cities.

 

Illustration by Bruno Mangyoku

 

III.  25 Year Vision

I tried something different this year. 

This time of year is usually a deep dive into personal reflections and assessing the previous year before organizing an intensely color-coordinated and somewhat intense spreadsheet of next year’s goals. I started writing a vision for the year (as I mentioned, free writing "today is the last day of the following year, what do I imagine has happened?") But it felt like I was just on autopilot and not deeply thinking about what I wanted to do differently. So, with the inspiration from a few friends, coaches, and articles, I started this year's process by writing a 25 year vision. (Okay, I know. That’s also pretty intense.)

Here’s how it worked: I blocked off about an hour. Started with a circle that I divided into 8 or 9 pieces and labeled each slice with an area of my life: family, career, finance, recreation, community, learning, art, home… Then I began writing a vision: “Today is my 60th birthday. The last 25 years have been incredible…” and I just make sure to get as detailed as I can about each of those categories and what (I want to have) happened.     

Some people might find that their lives are fulfilling by collecting a million different experiences– a "Forrest Gump life”– working a dozen careers, living nomadically, going out every night with famous people, breaking world records. But I found that for me, what would be most exciting and meaningful was the opposite–it was about commitment. Limiting the amount of slices, but filling them up with as much as they can take. I envision deep friendships with people I’ve known for 40 and 50+ years. That my work is clearly defined in its mission and pays me well enough to travel, save, retire, and spend a lot of time with family. Weekly dinners with friends and community. Painting once a week, putting out a dozen or so pieces every year and writing the email refrigerator every month. Both of which just crossed 300 before I turn 60.

It was a really fun and surprisingly enlightening activity. If you’re curious about trying it, the holidays and end of the year are a great time to sit down and put digital ink to digital paper. I’d love to hear what came up for you and how I can help guide your process.

Thanks as always for opening these, reading them, and sharing your thoughts.

Happy new year and happy beginnings for the next 25.

-Jake

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Jake Kahana http://www.jakekahana.com
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