This column was originally conceived with a suggested rhythm—bi-weekly. A familiar cadence. A predictable flow. A tempo that made sense on paper, mirroring how productivity is usually measured and how creative labor is expected to behave. And yet, almost immediately, that imagined rhythm began to feel misaligned with the very inquiry I am trying to hold.
And so I need to be honest with you: this work will not always move that way.
This column will be published as it comes to me; not as an act of inconsistency or a refusal of discipline, but as a refusal to flatten a living investigation into something mechanically reliable. What is unfolding here, both internally and externally, cannot be confined to linear expectations of output. This is not simply about writing and releasing something on schedule; it is about studying, feeling, noticing, unlearning, and allowing insight to arrive in its own time. It is about moving with the rhythms of my body, my creativity, and nature itself. And that, in itself, is part of the work.
I’ve come to the conclusion that linear time is not neutral. It is not simply a way of measuring days or organizing calendars. It is a technology—one that has shaped how Western thought understands progress, productivity, and worth, and one that capitalism depends on to extract labor, land, and life while presenting that extraction as natural, inevitable, and even virtuous.
To write this way requires holding multiplicity. I am holding multiple timelines and truths at once. I am holding multiple versions of myself as I evolve into the next phase of Leslie. Think Everything, Everywhere, All at Once—not as chaos, but as simultaneity. Nothing here is incidental or coincidental. Nothing exists in isolation. Everything is connected to everything, even when the connections reveal themselves slowly.
I’m not sharing this solely as a personal reflection. I’m sharing it as a site of inquiry. My body, my work, my burnout, my failed systems of productivity are not anomalies; they are predictable outcomes of a temporal logic that demands constant forward motion and equates speed with value.
With that framing in mind, it is not incidental that our bodies function in cycles, just as nature does. It is not an accident that we experience energies like birth and death repeatedly throughout our lives, often mirroring one another in quieter, less literal ways. Expansion and contraction. Creation and decay. Rest and emergence. These are not failures of progress; they are the fundamental rhythms of existence that precede productivity itself.
And because these rhythms cannot be endlessly accelerated, they have historically been treated as obstacles—inefficiencies to be disciplined, optimized, or ignored. Cycles resist extraction. Bodies resist constant output. Nature resists linear accumulation. Which is precisely why linear time had to be enforced.
Through this column, I am not only examining time as a concept; I am actively practicing a different relationship to it. That practice requires releasing rigid timelines, honoring gestation, and allowing pauses, returns, and nonlinear movement to be part of the process rather than interruptions of it. The form, in other words, must reflect the philosophy.
So while there may be a suggested structure, this work will unfold as it needs to. Because the very things I am interrogating—linear time, productivity, extraction—cannot be meaningfully examined while obeying them unquestioningly. To critique a system while fully submitting to its demands would be a contradiction I am no longer willing to perform.
From here, we move forward together. Not in a straight line, but in rhythm.
That rhythm, however, is not abstract. It collides daily with the realities of my life. Right now, I am juggling personal creative projects, collaborative brand work, long-term commitments to Decolonial Thoughts, a full-time job, and everything else that comes with being alive and attempting to live with intention. At the start of the year, I genuinely believed I had created the most efficient system possible for managing my time. Everything had a place. Everything had a time. Every task had a deadline. I felt on track—like, okay, this plan is definitely going to work. And mind you, this was after creating Existencia, so I really believed I could be a spiritual baddie, balance all my responsibilities, and still move along a clean, linear track… because that’s the system we’re operating in.
But stepping into a new role, on top of Decolonial Thoughts and everything else, disrupted that illusion of control. That neat grid of planned productivity—yes, including planned rest—started to wobble. I had intentionally scheduled time for rest, joy, and feeling. And yet, as I sit with this role, my practice, and how I actually want to live my life, something uncomfortable keeps surfacing: scheduling rest and joy does not align with the rhythms of my body. It does not align with the rhythms of nature.
What began as a well-intentioned structure revealed itself as another constraint. That grid—productivity, rest, joy—collapsed under the reality of how my body and mind actually function. Intellectually and spiritually, I am working toward a cyclical and vertical understanding of time: rhythms instead of straight lines, depth instead of constant forward motion. Yet my daily life still demands deadlines, milestones, quarterly output, and obedience to linear time.
This is not a personal failure. It is a structural contradiction. A system that requires linear time to function cannot accommodate bodies that move cyclically without producing friction, guilt, and exhaustion. When tension lives both in the mind and the body, it does not remain theoretical. It crystallizes into a question that refuses to be ignored: what does it mean to work in alignment with the body and mind within a system that measures worth through speed and production?
To understand why this contradiction feels so pervasive, we have to move backward—not to romanticize the past, but to trace how linear time became common sense in the first place.
In the introduction to this column, I shared that we would be studying time through three different perceptions: linear, cyclical, and vertical. For many of us, linear and cyclical frameworks are already familiar, whether through physics, spirituality, or everyday language. This piece blends personal reflection with study. I am using my own lived experience as evidence; evidence that it is possible to shift how we perceive time, and that such a shift matters deeply, especially when it comes to how we work and how we build.
Before we can arrive anywhere new, we have to sit with linear time as it currently exists within Western thought. We have to talk about the philosophy of progress. We have to define time as it is understood through science and Western epistemologies. To question a concept, anything in life, we must first understand what it is and how it functions.
Deadlines, in theory, create structure. In practice, they ignore the nonlinear ways creativity unfolds. Ideas rarely arrive on schedule. They arrive in waves, through rest, boredom, wandering attention, and embodied presence. Periods of apparent “doing nothing” are often the most generative. When I allow spaciousness, I enter flow states where work happens organically, efficiently, and with greater coherence and purpose. Linear time does not recognize gestation. It recognizes output.
This tension between cyclical creative rhythms and linear productivity expectations is not just personal; it is historical and philosophical. The pressure to constantly advance, optimize, and produce is rooted in a worldview where time moves in a straight line, history is measured through progress, and existence itself must be earned. We have to earn our being. We have to earn our breath.
Ancient Greek thinkers like Aristotle and Socrates emphasized teleology—movement toward an end, a purpose, a higher form. Progress was framed as ascent: moral, intellectual, civilizational. Becoming was valued over being. When becoming is privileged over being, those deemed closer to the “ideal” are granted authority, while others are positioned as incomplete, unfinished, or behind. Linear time does not merely describe movement—it ranks it. As I continue this work, defining terms becomes necessary, not as an academic exercise, but as a grounding practice. The Big Bang. Quantum physics. Relativity. Entropy. Time itself.
According to Merriam-Webster, time is defined as a measured or measurable period during which an action, process, or condition exists—duration. It is also described as a non-spatial continuum measured through events succeeding one another from past to present to future. In sociology, time is understood as a social construct. In science, it explains decay, expansion, and transformation.
From here, science fractures into multiple interpretations. Isaac Newton formalized time as absolute, flowing uniformly and independently of human experience. Time existed outside the body, outside perception, outside context. This framing revolutionized scientific inquiry, allowing motion and mechanics to be calculated with precision. But it also reinforced the idea that time is external to life; something that happens to us, rather than something we live within. Once time could be abstracted from bodies, it could be divided, sold, and controlled. Hours could be priced. Labor could be quantified.
Two centuries later, Albert Einstein complicated this certainty. His theory of relativity revealed time as elastic, shaped by speed and gravity. Time could stretch, slow, bend, and accelerate. It was no longer separate from space, but interwoven with it. And yet, even this radical shift remained tethered to a desire for universality; a single theory meant to explain reality everywhere.
Then there is the Big Bang. According to this model, time began at a singular moment and has been moving forward ever since. The universe was given an origin point and a trajectory. Time became synonymous with linear unfolding, a cosmic narrative of beginning, growth, and eventual end. These scientific paradigms shaped cultural imagination. If the universe itself began at a point and expands forward, then progress appears not only social but natural.
This obsession with progress laid the groundwork for ranking humanity itself. Stagnation became moral failure. Slowness became suspect. Cycles, return, repetition, and rest were treated as lesser forms of movement. Linear time did not simply organize history—it assigned value to human life.
The Industrial Revolution translated linear time from philosophy into daily enforcement. In many pre-colonial societies, life was organized around task-based and seasonal rhythms. Work followed daylight, weather, harvest cycles, and communal need. Time was relational. It was embodied. Industrialization introduced synchronization and optimization. Clocks became instruments of control. Bells dictated when to begin, when to stop, when to eat, and when to rest. Time was no longer something people moved with; it was something they obeyed.
Labor became measured in hours rather than outcomes tied to natural cycles. Quantity was prioritized over quality. Productivity could be quantified, compared, and optimized. The body was expected to function like a machine—constant, predictable, tireless. Fatigue was reframed as inefficiency. Rest became a liability.
We can see linear time reflected in the environments we inhabit. Grid-based cities. Factory floors. Office buildings designed for efficiency over embodiment. Architecture mirrors temporal ideology: forward motion, upward growth, constant throughput. These spaces are not neutral. They are designed to extract attention, labor, and energy while minimizing care and rest. The built environment becomes a silent manager, enforcing linear time without ever naming it.
Even our homes have absorbed this logic through rigid lines and neutral palettes. Everywhere I look, I see new developments mirroring progress ideology and enforcing white supremacy through concrete squares and interiors built around endless shades of beige. Return on investment is prioritized above all else. Wellness is aestheticized, measured, monetized. Built environments discipline the body, subtly enforcing speed, focus, and output.
Linear time did not remain confined to factories or cities. It became a tool of colonial domination. It positioned Europe as the future and the rest of the world as the past; societies deemed behind, delayed, or in need of intervention. Land was extracted in the name of progress. Labor was stolen in the name of civilization. Entire cultures were forced into temporal systems never designed for their survival.
To be colonized was not only to lose land and labor, but to lose control over one’s relationship to time. Indigenous ways of marking seasons, ancestry, ritual, and return were overwritten by clocks, calendars, and deadlines. Resistance was framed as stagnation. Survival was framed as failure to advance. This is where the 1% and legacy mindset take root. Wealth accumulation across generations requires time horizons most people are never given. The future becomes something owned and inherited, while the present is stripped for parts. Linear time rewards those who can afford to think in centuries and punishes those forced to live in immediacy. Profits arrive now. Consequences come later. Deferred harm becomes policy. Environmental destruction. Bodily exhaustion. Cultural erasure. All justified by the promise of progress that never arrives for everyone.
The consequences are everywhere: chronic burnout, widespread anxiety, ecological collapse, and a culture unable to be present because it is always preparing for what comes next. Linear time teaches us to live in anticipation rather than inhabitation. The future becomes a race. The present becomes a stepping stone. Stillness becomes a threat. This logic does not only shape work, it also shapes belief systems. It shapes how we relate to God, to spirit, to the unseen. It shapes how we design our lives and how we understand what it means to be worthy. When time is linear, life itself becomes a resource to be mined.
Linear time has shaped Western thought by turning existence into a race, capitalism into a moral imperative, and extraction into progress. It teaches us to value what accelerates, expands, and accumulates, while dismissing what rests, repeats, or returns. And if this is the logic we have inherited, then the work ahead is not simply to move more slowly, but to imagine time otherwise.
This reflection has clarified something for me: critique alone is no longer enough. Understanding linear time does not automatically loosen its grip on the body. So the work, for me, is shifting from analysis to practice.
My days have looked like paying attention to when urgency enters my body and asking whether it actually belongs there. I’m noticing where I default to productivity even in moments meant for rest. I’m allowing ideas to gestate without demanding they arrive fully formed. I’m loosening timelines where I can, not as resistance for resistance’s sake, but as an act of care for my nervous system.
This is not about opting out of the world. It’s about learning how to inhabit it differently. To support that, I’m sitting with the following questions—not to answer quickly, but to return to over time:
Where in my life am I obeying urgency without questioning it?
Whenever your nervous system feels ready for this—or when you feel gently curious about challenging it. I invite you to carve out one uninterrupted hour. Not to optimize, to produce, or to improve yourself. An hour to do nothing.
Sit. Stare at a wall. Let your mind wander without redirecting it. Notice how your body responds when it is no longer being managed. If thoughts pile up, let them. If rest feels uncomfortable, let that be information rather than something to fix.
You might also choose to write—without structure, without an outcome. A brain dump. A release. Not journaling for clarity, but journaling for honesty. And if it feels supportive, return to these questions during that time or throughout your week:
This is an introduction to Existencia as a practice; not something to master, but something to return to. A practice of releasing time as a measure of worth. A practice of noticing. Of presence. Of small refusals and quiet reorientations.
We’ll continue this investigation in the next edition of this column and on Substack, where we’ll move deeper into cyclical and vertical understandings of time—and into what alternative temporalities make possible for our bodies, our relationships, and our collective futures.
Until then, there is nothing to catch up to. There is only what you are already inside of.
Further Reading/Work That’s Influenced This Work (optional)
My work is shaped by various disciplines and revolutionaries in their respective fields. The following list includes many of the works that have influenced this column and my perception of the world. For those who want to sit longer with the ideas explored in this piece, the following texts offer deeper context on time, progress, capitalism, coloniality, and extraction across philosophy, science, and social theory:
On Time, Philosophy, and Western Thought
On Science, Cosmology, and the Construction of Time
On Labor, Capitalism, and Work Discipline
On Space, Architecture, and Power
On Colonialism, Growth, and Extraction
Kate Raworth, Doughnut Economics
Community.
