I 'finally' did it. The clock doesn’t want me to enjoy it.
What happened after I posted my first Substack.
Welcome to Liberating Time ⏳ A place to examine and repair our f*cked up relationship with time — for humans done waking up behind, rushing through their days, and feeling guilty for moving at their own pace.
Clock Time Awareness Field Notes
Date: Feb 2026
Context / where: At home, publishing online
Observation
I finally posted my first Substack! It was read by over 2700 people. I received thoughtful emails and had great conversations about it.
It was an sweet and important moment. But instead of pausing to celebrate this milestone in my creative life, all I can think about is how long it took me to do it.
(The answer could be the 5 or so hours it took to just write, or 6+ years of noodling, learning, and distilling).
Almost immediately, a second thought followed: now that that one is out of the way, it’s time to start the next piece.
Felt experience
Right after publishing, my body mostly felt relieved and a bit tired. A good “ooomph” and a desire to lie down. I genuinely felt proud of myself for about 12–24 hours.
Then my mind went: good, done, next.
My body tensed.
Even though my editorial document is full of ideas I’m genuinely excited to write about, the pressure to produce made me want to shut down and not write the next piece at all.
Instead of a full-bodied sense of excitement that naturally flowed into the next piece, I started preparing for an assumed battle with my future self.
What’s really going on here?
This is linear, dominant, extractive clock time at work.
In reality, creative work unfolds in loops, pauses, wanderings, experiences, and long invisible gestation periods. But under this time system, life gets judged by pace, efficiency, and output.
Even outside of traditional workplaces, moments quickly turn into a performance review:
How long did that take?
Was that efficient enough?
What’s the cadence now?
When is the next one?
The moment of publishing stops being an experience that can be felt and enjoyed. It becomes a unit of production. A deliverable. A check mark on a page.
Even the word “finally,” which we casually attach to many accomplishments, carries a quiet judgment. Instead of recognizing that five hours or even six years is nothing in the context of my tiny finite human lifespan, the timeline itself becomes the problem.
Online platforms and algorithms reinforce this relationship with time. We’re promised success if we can figure out how to publish, produce, maintain momentum, and stay consistent.
Over time, this logic becomes internalized and starts living inside our minds and bodies.
For some, this triggers a nervous system freeze. Pressure and quiet shame build until the very things we want to create start to feel impossible to begin.
For others, the response is to comply with the pace we’re told to keep and push. Over time, this pressure erodes our bodies, our attention, and the creative energy the work actually depends on.
Instead of excitement leading naturally into the next piece, the body braces.
The work begins to feel like something that must be pushed through rather than something that wants to emerge.
Personal Reflection
Notice the last time you finished something that mattered to you.
Maybe it was publishing something yourself. Completing a project. Sending an email you’d been putting off. Having an important conversation.
Did you stay inside the moment for a while? Or did your mind immediately move to evaluation and the next step?
Where in your life do meaningful moments quietly turn into checkpoints on a timeline?
Noticing is just the beginning.
Time liberation is a spiral journey through awareness, resistance, learning, and living differently—transforming both our internal relationship with time and the external systems that steal it from us.
Read about the Liberating Time journey here.
Noticed moments like this in your own life?
Where do you see linear, dominant, extractive clock time shaping your days?
You can submit your own Clock Time Awareness Field Notes by sharing a short story or observation from your life. These don’t have to be polished essays. Just real moments where you noticed the system at work.
The more we name these patterns, the easier they become to see. And once we can see them, we can start relating to time differently.