What is time anyway? And Jealousy with Jenny Odell
The best selling author of How To Do Nothing gives us a history of time.
"To resist in place is to make oneself into a shape that cannot so easily be appropriated by a capitalist value system." - Jenny Odell
In 2019, artist and writer Jenny Odell came out with a book that changed the way we think about rest and existing outside capitalist productivity narratives. It scratched an itch we were all having with our endless to-do lists, and I came away with the awareness that all of my most meaningful experiences could not be quantified within a capitalist system.
Take for example, the joy that comes from watering a plant and noticing its leaves perk up within the hour. Or when a friend calls you right when you are thinking about them. Those sorts of moments, make life feel good. That is to say, those moments couldn’t really be felt without a certain amount of privilege. But nevertheless, How To Do Nothing looked at things from a new angle that offered relief from the pressure of existence only for money.
I have a weird story about Jenny. But it’s honest. Or at least I think it is. Jenny and I went to grad school together. We met in 2008 and have been in the Bay Area ever since. Jenny is the person who taught me how to deal with jealousy.
I know you have people in your life (or maybe you don’t? That’s great!) that spark some sort of envy for you at times. In the past, I have worked really hard to not let people know that I am feeling this way, pushing the feelings down, telling myself I was a bad person for not being 100% happy for others’ success.
Jenny is one of the people who on the outside seems like they have it all. She is brilliant. She got a teaching job at Stanford seemingly right out of grad school. Her work blew up in a way that was really outside of any of my graduating classes’ expectations. And from the outside, it seemed effortless. This goes to show how little I knew about Jenny and what she was going through. I knew she was smart, I knew I loved her art, but there was something inside of me that asked the question, “Why is this not happening for me?”
I feel very shameful about that statement. But I don’t think I should. In our first interview about How To Do Nothing, Jenny stated something like, online makes me fall into this compare and despair loop. One that always ends in wasted time feeling shitty about oneself.
For me, I wanted to find a way to celebrate someone who I admire’s success authentically. To do that, I had to frame it as my own. That also sounds fucked up. But I think it is real. That we are part of a community of people and when something good happens to one of us, it is all of ours. You might disagree. And I am ok with that. This is just what worked for me to feel wholly excited for the people in my life when good things happen to them.
Jenny’s second book, Saving Time will change the way you think about time, and so much more. I am confident that I am too stupid to be Jenny’s friend, but also, that being said, I found so many nourishing delicate elements in Saving Time.
“The story of how something new emerges from what already exists is the story of time.”
-Jenny Odell
Jenny talks at length about how our current understandings of time, in their roots, were not about us, but about making money. Seeing time as separate from cycles is a human construct that tries to mechanize our organic bodies. This system is designed at its core to maximize profit for those in power.
Saving Time reorientates us with an exploration of all the things that time could be and is. By understanding the history of how the “time-is-money” model came to be, and contrasting it with other forms of time, such as ecological and geological.
Finding meaning outside the restrictive nature of time, and rejoicing in the fluidity of existence is what Saving Time was about for me. It is about letting go of control in favor of finding meaning. Finding inherent worth in encounters. Expanding what it means to be alive to include rocks, earth, water, all active participants in the world. All of us respond to our environment in time.
This is not a practical book about how to have more time. “Maybe ‘the point’ isn’t to live more, in the literal sense of a longer or more productive life,” she writes, “but rather, to be more alive in any given moment.”
There is something comforting in sitting with the smallness of life, in the massive inconceivable universe. Jenny is a guide to finding worth and awe in the overlooked places where joy often hides.
We have a copy of Saving Time to giveaway to our US-based subscribers. Leave a comment here to let us know if you’d like one. Or pick up a copy for yourself here. Or at your favorite local bookstore.
Jenny also has a mailing list to keep up with all the amazing work she does and has coming up. Sign up for it here. She’s brilliant.
The bit about jealousy of people in your life- yes (and also realizing others are probably jealous of you). It does come from ignorance of a person’s inner life and everything they have endured. But there is that magic when a person has good fortune- the realization their “win” despite everything is proof good things can happen to us all. I’ve been contemplating that.
I’d love a copy. More than that I love your newsletter with insights and sketches and observations of life x
I would love a copy! This post is excellent food for thought. Thank you.