Time travel

Being in the moment is fine. So is not being in the moment.

This weekend I went to the opening of Adam Magyar's Urban Times at the Stephen Bulger Gallery. Magyar's photography explores our experience of time. It shows the soft motion of trees and the pattern of humans over several days. It shows the people who happen to be walking roughly in sync with the speed of a camera traveling down the sidewalk, while completely obscuring those going in the other direction. It captures the way we mentally transport ourselves as we wait for a train.

Since seeing the show, I keep noticing how much of my time is spent time traveling.

The fifteen minutes I spent at Shoppers waiting to get my flu shot vanished as I was busy reading one of the endless articles I hoard on Instapaper. A friend and I spent a comical amount of time trying to remember the name of a cafe we went to months ago, sifting through many lunches in search of the right memory. Somehow I navigated the crowded sidewalk without paying any attention to it, while I was busy mentally planning this week's to-do list. My mind wandered to past dinners while I cleaned the oven, which had me thinking about meals I could make in the future. Last night I was transported into someone else’s life as I stayed up later than planned to watch a movie (I tell myself it’s educational as long as it’s in Portuguese). I don't spend very much time in the now.

This is benign time travel. It's not anxiety. It's not guilt. It's not shame. It's not PTSD. It's not even the Sunday Scaries.

There's so much emphasis on mindfulness these days, it’s easy to forget that it’s okay to not always be in the moment. However useful being in the moment can be, there's still a purpose in our lives for time travel. Waiting for the train isn’t as nice as reminiscing about my last family visit or looking forward to next weekend’s plans.

It's pretty cool that we have the ability to conjure up the past, imagine a future, and to escape ourselves entirely.

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If you’re in the US and preparing to use the FMLA to take time off to care, Legal Aid at Work has an upcoming webinar to help you navigate the process.

The Hill marks SSI’s anniversary:

“This month marks 50 years since Congress created the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program.

Designed to combat poverty among people with disabilities and older adults who have little income and few assets, the program’s outdated rules and benefits now do just the opposite—forcing people to live in poverty for meager monthly cash assistance that doesn’t cover basic needs.”

The shortage of service providers in the US continues to grow. That means more work for unpaid care workers. The ACL is working with this through their Direct Care Workforce Capacity Building Center.