EL2: Decolonizing My Relationship with Time

“I was taught to measure my worth in urgency.
But my body keeps time in a different language.”

—

The Matrix runs on deadlines and dopamine.

It rewards hustle.

Worships speed.

Demands compression.

You are never doing enough,
never fast enough,
never ahead enough.

So we internalize it.

We rush healing.
We rush purpose.
We rush home to ourselves like it’s a sprint.

But time is not a machine.

And neither are we.

—

There is a slower rhythm—

one the Earth remembers.
One the body knows.

It does not demand.

It invites.

It is the rhythm of breath.
Of digestion.
Of emergence.

Integration cannot be scheduled.

It unfolds in its own season.

—

Decolonizing my time meant refusing to be optimized.

It meant grieving how much I’d pushed myself for timelines I didn’t choose.

It meant allowing pauses to be sacred
instead of shameful.

Some days are quiet.
Some days are flood.
Some days I disappear into the in-between.

And all of it is valid.

I do not need to explain my pace
to a world addicted to acceleration.

—

Time is no longer my master.

It is my collaborator.

I listen.
I respond.
I let the cycles move me.

And in that rhythm,

I have found a peace I never found in productivity.