Thinking Out Loud
|
||||||||||
| Printer Friendly Story View |
"The clock talked loud. I threw it away, it scared me what it talked."
Tillie Olsen, Tell Me a Riddle
My dad was right.
One day, a couple decades ago, he said to me, "When you are in your 20's and 30's, time goes by at what you feel is a 'normal pace'."
He went on to say, "When you hit 40, time starts to feel like a steam train picking up speed and before you know it, you look in the mirror and think, "When did I get old??"
As I literally RAN from the laundry room back up the steps to the writing I wanted to get done today, I glanced at the drum set in the basement and thought, "Oh and I want to play those yet today too!", it dawned on I knew what my dad meant.
Where IS time going?
Why does it seem as if I've entered a time warp that is running at a 1.5 times faster rate than what it used to?
My plan today was to relax a little with some writing projects, make a few pieces of jewelry, watch a movie that's been que'd up in Netflix for over 3 months that I haven't gotten to yet, read a book a buddy loaned me, do my nails, go to the Y, have dinner with a friend and see a play tonight.
I got up early this morning and it's already 1:00pm. Dinner is at 5:30pm. I'm never going to have enough time to get everything done on my list that I wanted to.
The movie will have to wait until another time. I may only get a few pages of the book read. I'll just put another coat of nail polish over the old one to cover the chips and I don't think the drum set and I are going to be able to spend quality time together today.
In recent years, I've spent more and more effort priortizing and re-prioritizing the things I want to accomplish in any given day.
Time, or lack there of it, has become an enemy, something to battle, a nemesis to slay.
Books have a one chapter limit in which to grab my attention. If they don't, I move on to the next. There are too many good books to read to spend precious time on that which I'm having trouble getting interested in.
Movies, I will give a maximum of 20 minutes. (30 minutes, if Johnny Depp is in it)
If I'm not engrossed, moved, amused or being entertained in that period of time, I figure they had they had their chance and blew it. So, it's on to the next film.
The occasional nap, which I used to enjoy, has been relegated to a low level priority. I want to spend my time awake, enjoying life, learning something new, entertaining friends or starting a new creative project.
This is how my life has been for quite some time now.
It isn't clear to me if it's just that I've found so many fun things in life that I enjoy doing and that this 'prioritizing' is a HEALTHY thing or it's just become a frantic effort on my part to slay my own time stealing dragon.
I would like to think it's because I have a good grasp on how to manage my time, but I suspect deep down, it may actually be I have a good grasp that life is short. Really short.
Either way, I've realized two things.
One, time is starting to steam train and pick up speed on me.
Two, my dad was right.
Again...
| Printer Friendly Story View |
|
|
Diane Szczepanski |
|
|
|
Printer-Friendly Story View
0200 Nd: 04-16-2024 d 4 cpr 0
12/31/2020 P3v3-0200-Ad.cfm
SPONSORED LINKS
12/31/2020 drop ads P3v3-0200-Ad.cfm