Time

Lately, I’ve been contemplating time. Not so much the whole concept, my mind would implode and I’d be fetal sitting in the shower muttering about futility and all that jazz. No, I've been thinking about time as it relates to me and the way I’ve conducted myself. Let me explain.

I was the kid that at five years old would sit in the bathtub and contemplate my own mortality. Bear with me, this isn’t all so depressing, I promise it takes a turn. The point I’m establishing is that I’ve always worried about the limited amount of time I’ve had. Maybe I was burdened with glorious purpose or something, I didn’t know why, but it always felt so fleeting, even when it was supposed to feel infinite.

As I got older, I was always preparing for the future, and I did all the things I was expected to societally to do so. Kept up my studies and all that fun shit. Then I failed out of university in my first year. I didn’t want to be an engineer, I didn’t know what I wanted but it wasn’t that. Honestly, since that moment in time, I’ve been a drifter in life. I lost my plan for the future, and spent decades trying to get back on track.

I’ve been making up for lost time.

I’ve felt like I needed to catch up, and was running out of time.

I’ve spent almost forty years trying to set myself up to have a good time.

And it’s all been wasted time.

I’m finally realizing that this obsession with time isn’t mine. It’s all so tied into me being on someone else’s schedule, trying to fit someone else’s standards. My life doesn’t make any sense, but to say it’s a mess, or broken, or doesn’t work, because of that… it’s not fair to me. I’ve let myself believe that my time is not my own, that it belongs to some expectation of how it should be spent, instead of trusting myself to use my own time, and most importantly appreciating my time when I have it.

I love Hootie and the Blowfish. If you made it this far you get that one for free. And they wrote a song about time. And hey they got it right in that one.

tomorrow’s just another day

and I don’t believe in time

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Leaderboards

​Well, I’m at it again. Checking the leaderboards. I’ve always enjoyed playing video games. I am not great at most of them. But it never kills my joy. Until I start looking at the leaderboards. There’s a certain rush to being measured and found to be “good.” It’s validating, it’s an affirmation of value in that context. It’s also absolutely destructive. Once you get sucked into the hole of striving to be “good,” you tie your value only to the numbers. The experience doesn’t matter anymore, it’s become entirely about the pursuit of that threshold. And there is no “good enough.” You will say that there is. You’ll even believe it. But then you hit that plateau, and you think “maybe I can get a little better.” So you push for the next target, the next milestone, and you keep pushing. This isn’t the destructive part. Self-improvement is a beautiful thing. But it doesn’t stop there. You keep your eyes on those leaderboards. And you’re in a good place, but there’s still people better. They’re...
Read more

Thoughts on a Freedom Trainwreck

It’s been a really really long year, and it’s only January. There’s a ton of reasons for this, but right now I’m focusing on one. This is America. It’s got me so fucked up lately. And I’m not your standard, garden variety panicked yankee over here. I’m not making preparations to leave, I fucking can’t. Ain’t just that easy, I’m not marketable and my wife’s got Multiple Sclerosis, we’re not providing value, we’d be refugees not emigrants. But I’m already digressing. I think the best way to put this is that I’m not afraid. I’m concerned. Fear implies a feeling of danger. I’m a straight-passing cis white man with some beautiful baby blues, my bleeding heart is the only thing that makes me distinguishable from the alpha male misogynist and gigachad MAGA maniac. I don’t fear for myself. But i have strong concerns for people I hold dear to me. I’m also pissed off. Pissed off that my Canadians won’t be coming here because of the bullshit of our leader here and the legitimate danger he puts f...
Read more

Shire Years

I haven’t wanted to burden anyone with the following thoughts, so instead I will indirectly throw them at a wide array of someones. It’s much like shotgunning my melancholy into the void, hoping to minimize its impact on the world around me. You see, these thoughts shouldn’t really carry any impact. It’s the same old feeling around my birthday. One of a lack of importance or visibility. This feeling isn’t one I like to feed. It’s a huge underlying part of my worst qualities, and it drives me to be everything I desire to not be. But around August 11, it gets harder to shoo away. We equate the anniversary of our birth with a sense of meaning, and it lends itself to selfish thoughts. And oh, my sweet Ora, I am a sucker for those. I struggle to accept my place in the stories I get to share in this journey. The truth is always that I am just happy to have a place in the tales others tell, but I desire more than I let on, almost always. It’s simple, but it’s deceptively tricky. I de...
Read more