What will you do with your time, my darling?

On not wasting a moment

Andrea Gibson, the wonderful poet and activist died at 49 this week. They were someone who lived to the outer edges of their life, they wasted nothing. They were so talented. They were so young.

I was mentoring my friend Rochelle on a book she was writing when the clock stopped. Even as the cancer siphoned her energy and finances, she kept at it, never missing a session. She was so certain she was going to complete the project. We both drilled down into it with all the unspoken hurry the circumstances called for.

When my mother was dying, all she wanted to do was eat spicy curry in between the chemotherapy. Food was her thing. One of our last outings was to an Indian spice shop where she filled a basket with cardamom, curry leaves and turmeric, all of which she never got to use.

‘I love my life,’ she told my father, when she knew time was seeping away. It’s a mantra I’ve had tattooed on my left forearm in her handwriting.

Sometimes a death comes to speak to you about your own ways.

When young people die, it assails me – my own frittering. (‘Young’ to me is anyone younger than I am).

But just to be clear, I do not discard time easily. To onlookers, I am more workaholic than idler – I don’t distinguish between weekdays and weekends. Writing is an ever-insistent devotion, with no correlation between how much time you put in and the commercial value you might get from it.

I burn with urgency – a trait that might be construed as ‘drive’ and ‘ambition.’ Mostly, it’s a sense of wanting to finish whatever is bubbling through me, before the winds take me and my bones sigh back into the dust. I know these Call Backs to the Great Mystery are random and imminent. I know tomorrow could be my ‘time-out’ and if I have any regrets in my final moments it will probably be, ‘You didn’t finish that poetry collection.’

I have always moved with urgency, waking early, often at my desk or in the ocean before sunrise. I whip through emails, keep lists, work through them vigilantly. The hours before midday are my most precious, when my brain is dream-sodden and the world-out-there remote and inconsequential before I have let email and the Sodom and Gomorrah of social media in. I schedule my own creative work in these golden hours before I am frayed and shredded by interactions and daily tasks.

In the early evening, my brain shuts down and even conversation can feel like too much of a raid on my energy. Then, I occasionally veg out in front of the TV with Zed because his hand on my leg, Archie by my side, and the softness of not having to do or be anyone but a blob in a gown on the couch is a balm to the exasperated irritations of the performative existence beyond my domestic nest.

But there are even some shows (in which some producer has invested millions of dollars) about which I will valiantly declare from the sofa, ‘Life is too short for this, I’m going to bed.’

I don’t understand what it is – to ‘do-nothing.’ I cannot imagine spending five days watching a cricket match and not returning bereft of the 120 hours that has just cost me, though Zed assures me this is anything but ‘time-wasted.’ Apparently there are social perks. Dopamine hits. Overpriced hotdogs.

In the past few years, after a burnout in 2018, I began to take a Sabbath on a Saturday where I unplug from all electronics and I ‘rest’ – it involves me writing by hand, painting, pottering and attending to things that have zero commercial value but which make me happy. I have found it invigorates my writing when I return to my desk. Spaciousness is part of the creative tide. I am learning how to read these currents and be less anxious about wasting a single moment.

Time-off for me is like an emotional support animal. It is there, in service to ‘the work.’ If I didn’t think it had benefits to my productivity, I might abandon it. I am a bit mercenary about it in that way.

But this thing of time. It haunts me more and more.

The paucity of it. The unrecoverable nature of it. The absolute uncertainty of how much is left when I am still so full, bubbling over, with words and Things Left To Do.

With Andrea Gibson, Rochelle and other dear young people who got their call ups to the Afterlife too, too soon in my heart, I am hurtling. I have my own book projects to finish and so many others to help finish theirs.

I will be spending a month in Finland in October on a writing residency to finish my book The Ransom of Rain and to explore and document the mechanics and mysteries of creativity.

In 2026, I will run two, maybe three retreats – Perth, Portugal and Hydra. I have another potentially lined up for Canada either in 2026 or 2027.

If you too feel the urgencies to offer up what is in you, before it leaves with you, come. Come join me. Let’s exit the earth lightly, our luggage of stories left circling the earth’s carousel, evidence of Time We Spent Being Human.

Email Anna for information about Portugal and Hydra: anna@annakwiecinska.com

Email me if you want to be on the list for Perth or Canada: joanne@joannefedler.com

My deep prayer is that you get to complete your wish list.

I’m here to cheer you on.

Words by Andrea Gibson

Deep love, my friends.

x

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