The Time Thief Within
Why Stealing Time from Work Taught Me I’d Been Stealing It from Myself All Along
This past week I was caught stealing time from work.
It wasn’t my first offense, and although I’ve tried to justify it in different ways, the truth is simple: I was using someone else’s time for my own.
Whenever I think about it, the shame still stings. Every “justifiable excuse” that runs through my head sounds hollow after being caught at my desk, not doing my work.
It’s still hard to make eye contact with my supervisor, and I wonder how long that discomfort will linger.
But here’s the question that kept circling back — not “What are you doing?” but rather:
“Why are you still here when you could be working on your dream, writing all day? Why do you feel the need to steal something that should already be yours?”
The Real Crime Wasn’t Stealing Time — It Was Stealing It From Myself
The actual crime isn’t what happened at work. It happens every time I don’t show up to the page — every time I abandon the quiet pact I made with myself when I left my business a few years ago.
That’s the miss that really matters: walking away from myself whenever the shame gets too close to doing something that fills my creative cup.
The day after the incident, I experienced an emotional hangover, and as a form of self-punishment, I didn’t want to write. My inner critic arrived right on schedule, perched on my shoulder.
“See what happens when you put yourself first,” it whispered. “It’s not as easy as you thought.”
Instead of spiraling, I tried something different.
I stepped back and asked myself honestly: What’s really going on here?
Was it the lure of the after-work routine — numbing out with crime show reruns and Law & Order episodes I’ve already seen?
Probably, yes.
But the midlife truth runs deeper than distraction.
We have a lifetime of practice at abandoning ourselves gracefully. We dress it up as busyness, as responsibility, as just needing to decompress — and that makes the perfect excuse.
Why Two Misses Are Structurally Dangerous
Missing a habit once is human. Missing it twice is where the story starts to shift — and the shift matters more than the miss itself.
Miss once: your identity stays intact. “I’m a writer who had a hard day.”
Miss twice: the narrative begins to change. “I’m someone who keeps trying and failing.”
Each miss feeds a compounding shame loop, making the next return feel harder.
The ritual itself starts to feel foreign — the chair, the notebook, the hour all become strangers.
For midlife women especially, this hits differently. We are not lacking discipline. We are often lacking permission. Two misses can feel like the universe revoking it.
As James Clear put it in his 3-2-1 Newsletter: Missing once is the fallout. Missing twice becomes the surrender.
Recovery Strategies That Actually Work
These aren’t just for writers — they’re for anyone trying to build a habit that genuinely serves them.
The 2-Minute Return. Don’t try to restore the full ritual. Just touch it. Open the notebook. Write one sentence. The habit only asks to be acknowledged.
Name the Miss Without a Story. Say “I missed two days” — not “I always do this.” Honesty without narrative punishment.
Lower the Floor, Not the Standard. Your 20-minute writing session can temporarily become five minutes. The identity stays; the load lightens.
Create a Re-entry Ritual. A small ceremony for coming back — the same tea, the same chair, a specific playlist — makes return feel like homecoming, not penance.
Write the Slip Itself. Use the miss as material. A journal entry about why you didn’t journal is still a journal entry.
The Permission Problem
What does it mean when we feel we have to steal time in order to pursue our own inner lives?
I had to ask myself honestly: Am I really that distracted, or do I deep down feel like I don’t deserve it?
That’s where self-sabotage shape-shifts and quietly takes over — wearing the costume of distraction, looking perfectly reasonable.
Maybe the answer is as simple as sitting down on a Tuesday afternoon, setting a timer for thirty minutes, and just finishing the writing.
That’s the same “secret sauce” I use to get motivated in every other area of my life. It’s truly okay to miss — more than once, more than twice — because missing doesn’t mean you’ll never go back.
The real trick is refusing to beat yourself up for being human.
At work, I’m now practicing something new: being respectful not only of my employer’s time, but of my own.
I’m making amends in both directions. Because time is the one resource that doesn’t replenish — and every day, we lose just a little more of it.
Stealing time from work was the symptom.
Stealing time from myself was the disease.
The writing I keep putting off, the page I keep abandoning — that’s where the real debt accumulates.
Midlife has a way of making that cost undeniable. But it also offers something unexpected: the clarity to finally see it, name it, and choose differently.
Not perfectly. Not all at once. But today, with a timer and a little bit of grace, we begin again.
Ready to reclaim your mornings (or your afternoons)?
Download my FREE 5-Minute Midlife Ritual Guide and start showing up for yourself — five minutes at a time. [Grab your free copy here
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Kathleen, I can hear the struggle is real for you right now, but I do hope you'll continue to be kind to yourself and give yourself credit that because you are so motivated ultimately to get your book out into the world, you will see it through.
I think some days writing comes easy, and some days you do get blocked. I don't think you can always be creative on command. Usually I find letting it go and letting my brain relax a bit just lets the brain work on it in the background and give it space to let the ideas come forth.
Regardless, I like your ideas for gently bringing you back to work. We all cheat on our "employer" from time to time LOL.