Alex Claman

Jenny Odell, Saving Time



This is intended as an ongoing, developing post as I continue to ponder and ruminate on the book

I am thus considering this a small, but hopefully growing, garden (of sorts)

The discussion of “gardening time” continues to stick with me, particularly the example of receiving bean seeds from a friends which were themselves only the latest round of seeds from a plant purchased in the 1970s


It turns out, not doing their art was costing them time, was draining it away, little by little, like a slow but steady leak. They had assumed, wrongly, that there wasn’t enough time in the day to do their art, because they assumed (because we’re conditioned to assume) that every thing we do costs time. But that math doesn’t take energy into account, doesn’t grok that doing things that energize you gives you time back. By doing their art, a whole lot of time suddenly returned. Their art didn’t need more time; their time needed their art.

Mandy Brown