Thoughts About Finding The Time.

Do we not have the time to achieve important tasks, or are we simply hiding behind a subconscious (silly) excuse?

Just like January 1st, the middle of September–at least for Europeans–is a period of awakening and new beginnings.
School is back, work returns to pre-summer pace, leaves start to drop on the ground and people begin counting the days until Christmas. Life becomes busy again, cities fill up with hoards of excited students (and workers) looking forward to promising prospects, musty and misty air characterizes the first chilly nights of the season.

Social media fills up with nostalgic posts depicting enviable dinners al fresco on the Italian riviera; our cool friends return from their exotic vacations with juicy gossip and tales of fleeting summertime romance. 

Personally, this September meant coming back to Milan ready to kick some ass after a loOoOooOng and necessary break from work, writing and everything that falls in between.
I dedicated the hottest month of the year to give my brain time to breathe and recover from extreme burnout and fatigue, while forcing myself to do nothing demanding for more than four weeks. During that time, I even scaled back on thinking – it felt refreshing. 

As you may know if you have been consistently reading my newsletter for a while (or follow me on IG), on July 29th I walked away from my last “office job” after confirming my time in that kind of stable position within fashion had expired a long time ago – 2018 to be precise, if we are counting figures. It’s not like I didn’t know I was tired of being an industry insider before I made the conscious decision to join Sunnei in 2021, but I guess I was under the impression that one last stint doing what I was used to doing, this time with the best title one can aim for, wasn’t going to harm me (I was wrong).
I thought it was going to validate the 10 years I spent dealing with clothing and hysterical people; it was quite the opposite.

In fact, my time as a marketing director reiterated that I am ready to take on the reins of my (career) destiny and fully invest in those projects I have been hiding in the back of my closet for the “right time”. You know, to dive head first into something of my own instead of helping everybody else reach their business goals.
For example, I have been telling myself I need to take my writing skills to the next level and write a book for years.
I have the topic, I have the passion, I have the skills; the foundation is there. Yet, up until recently, I have been working hard to convince myself that I didn’t have the time to sit and think through it, to do the research needed and put the pen down on paper. So everytime somebody close to me asked about this mythological endeavor, here I went sounding like Julia Fox in that infamous red carpet interview where, when asked about a dream projects she is working on, she–looking high as fuck– said to the interviewer, “I don’t want to give too much away anyway, because I am very superstitious, so I don't like to speak about things before they are finished, but it’s so far a masterpiece”. 

We all know that those are just filler words and there is probably no masterpiece under construction, the idea is still just an idea in its embryonic stage floating around our gray matter.
My book (and all the other projects I have in the pipeline) is the same.

The reality of the facts is, sadly, that telling myself “I don’t have the time” is actually simply a mere favorite excuse to procrastinate on tasks that I am subconsciously afraid to fail, while favoring menial things like scrolling endlessly on my phone, texting my friends, reading an unimportant article, tweeting not so smart opinions. Essentially things that don’t potentially entail a tragic outcome.
I almost fell trap to that very pretense when thinking about what to write for today’s newsletter. 

After dropping off my friend Simone at the Palermo airport on Sunday morning, I had a full day to open my laptop and write this content, yet I didn’t do it.
I preferred taking a stroll through the streets of Palermo, as if it was going to be the very last time I came to the city, disregarding the fact that it is actually where I am from and I can go back there whenever I please. 
When my break was finally over on Monday, and I turned the key in the lock of my Milan apartment, instead of prioritizing making sure I had something to send out today, after unpacking, I decided to get my nails done, eat and watch a HBO show I had been locked out of for weeks.

Sure, I desperately needed a manicure as I risked poking an eye out each time I tried to remove my contact lenses at night and I missed knowing what Shawna & Mia were up to in episode 7 and 8; but those futile activities–according to my goals in life–didn’t even make it to the top three items on my “things to do when I get back home” list.
On the other hand, “make sure you have material for your Wednesday newsletter” was; still, up until this morning, I had nothing because instead of finding the time to do something that helped me reach “success”, I decided to dedicate my time to other, less pressing matters, like visiting the nail salon.

As a consequence, a sheer sense of guilt hovered over me when I woke up at 6AM ready to kill it.
Instead of beating myself up about it and looking for new ways to run away from the problem, I decided to find the time to complete my assignment by rewiring the way I think about it; instead of feeling defeated because I let life get in the way, I chose to proactively take steps to become the kind of person who shows up for herself by thinking about “doing” in a more philosophical way. 

Rather than separating myself from the project, I thought about the task at hand as an extension of who I am. By aiming to be the person “who finds the time” instead of hiding behind the silly excuse of “not having the time”, I was able to successfully write uninterrupted for one hour this morning.
I concentrated on delivering the best (at least I think) possible outcome before allowing all the other bricks in the game of tetris that make up our day to day stack up and figuratively touch the ceiling (hoard my minutes). 

By putting this way of thinking into practice, not only I feel proud of my accomplishment, I also feel confident that operating in this way will help me stay on track and finally deliver all of the broken promises I made to myself, out to the world. 
If you, like me, often find yourself saying “I don’t have the time” to do things that are intrinsically important to you, you should try to shift the way you go about it too.

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PS. While you are here, check out my website www.naomiaccardi.info — here you can find my work, more about who I am and the things I am good at. Currently, I am looking for projects in NYC. So if you think I suit something you are working on, feel free to hit me up!

PPS. Recently I subscribed to this great newsletter called The Rebel Educator, after finding their twitter account and being intrigued by the way they approach education. As a 31 year old woman in a committed relationship, I am starting to think about how I would like to educate my children one day. The articles they publish bring a fresh perspective on discipline and growth. I highly suggest it.

PPPS. As I re-enter the hustling world of freelancing, I am thinking of monetizing my newsletter in order to be able to dedicate the time needed to deliver great literature to your inboxes weekly.
When I first embarked this adventure, I didn’t think I would be so invested in creating a moldable editorial space where I could freely talk about real shit, but the more it grows, the more I feel obligated to making sure I don’t half ass anything.
Obviously putting Things I Thought About behind a paywall means relying on your kind support and belief in my talent as an independent writer but also it will grant me the time to take it to the next level with exclusive features and initiatives.
I will most likely take this step in the new year, but in the meanwhile I wanted to test the waters.