By Maria Padhila
“My life is a sausage festival.” It’s not quite up there with the Weiner texts, but it shares something of the concept, if not their spirit, and it’s what I texted to a friend the other day when she asked about going to a wine festival. I had to say no. Overbooked is the norm.
I haven’t been poly long, but it’s been long enough to hear most of the standard jokes, like this one: “What’s the mating call of the polyamorists? Get out your calendars.” I have heard about people who use adding or subtracting a partner from the Google calendar share list as a signifier of the significance of the relationship. Issac and I live, love, and argue by iCal; Chris doesn’t have the technology, so I email him dates I’m booked with Issac and family and friends. And still, disputes ensue.
That’s because what we’re arguing about here doesn’t have anything to do with whether the format is Google or iCal. It’s about the way we believe time equals love, attention, care.
On the face of it, it makes sense. The popular programs of any time management gurus are predicated on the assumption that one sets priorities based on what one values, and allots time accordingly. From there also comes the notion of ‘quality time’, that is, you can stint on actual time spent on what’s important to you if you really focus hard on it for a few seconds. But I can’t lose sight that time management is an outgrowth of business; efficiency studies were birthed out of the same environment that gave us the assembly line. Could there be more to time than this?