As an indie author who also works a day job, I stay busy. All. The. Time. I jokingly say that’s a good thing. That it keeps me out of trouble. But in truth, I often feel overwhelmed with all the 
things on my to-do list. I race from task to task, careening through each day like I’m hurrying toward some nebulous finish line. As if such a thing wouldn’t be final. The End. (For now.) Each task at work is a problem to be solved. Every step along the way from story concept to first page to publication to marketing is a mile marker. My housekeeping and cooking and cat-care tasks are cyclic goals. Working and writing and the day-to-day crop-ups are endless, never stopping until you cross the Finish Line. That’s why we race. Because somewhere in there, between all the need-to-dos, we hope to squeeze in some want-to-dos. Right?
The problem, at least for me, is that most days I get so driven to complete one task after another after another that it becomes a habit. If I’m not busy, it feels like I’m shirking. So I jump from one deadline straight into the next and think, “I’ll relax and rest later.” Except “later” never comes. This has been going on for some time now, maybe since 2019 when I decided to write Entheóphage. (Oh, who am I kidding? This has been my mindset for many years, with brief respites here and there.)
Last week, though, the speed of time’s passing smacked me between the eyes like a clue-by-four. Days are whizzing by in a blur and I’m so focused on my latest manuscript or social media or whatever that I’m missing everything else. It’s already the end of June. Sheesh. 
Wasn’t it January just yesterday? I turn around and a week has passed. Or a month. Or a year. Where is it all going?
I will be 65 this October. There are likely to be fewer years ahead of me than behind me, and that sudden realization of fleeting time struck hard and left me pensive. One thought in particular lingered. Am I using my time in the best way possible? In other words, am I truly doing what makes me happy? Fulfilled? Content?
My first reaction was, “Of course I am! I’m married to a wonderful partner. I’m writing. I’m publishing. People are reading my stories. I have everything I need, if not everything I *want*.” But I made myself stop and ask again, in a slightly different way. If I could do anything, anything at all with the time I have left, what would it be? Whatever the response, it would determine the course of my life, going forward. After all, time isn’t a renewable resource. Once it’s gone, it never comes again.
Woah. Deep.
Even with repeated questions, though, my answer has not changed. If I could do anything, I would write. The only change I’d make is that my works would provide enough income that I could switch to full-time writing. Who knows? Maybe that day is coming. But everything else?
There are a bazillion little moments that make up the day. Many are often filled with monotony or frustration or annoyance. I push through them all, thinking I just need to “get through this” so that I could get to “the next thing.” Which is, of course, another goal to be endured so that I can break through to the moments of joy—spending time with B, writing, watching the birds at the feeders.
But when this sudden awareness of time’s passing struck, something else dawned on me in the way a deep Mystery will (even though it has been staring you in the face for a while).
This is what Life is. All of it. The good, the bad, the ups, the downs. Making and losing friends, finding joy and feeling despair, comforting and being comforted, the interactions with ourselves and others and the Divine in all its forms, the seconds and minutes and hours and days we spend running errands and feeding our children and overpacking our schedules and working for ourselves or someone else, paying bills and buying treasures, chasing dreams, making plans, time spent alone or with another—all of it. Life isn’t something that happens when ________________ (fill in the blank).
Life. Is. This. Moment.
And this one.
And this one.
It’s everything that happens to us and everything that we want, whether or not we get it. It’s about our dreams and our actions and our intentions and our good deeds and our bad ones as well. The lessons we learn and those we keep needing to repeat. (Like this one.)
Those in-between moments and experiences have something to teach me. Something I’ve been missing. But even if they don’t, being fully present in each one will at least leave me with a clear memory of their passing, instead of a blur and a breeze as they fly by. Mindfulness like that doesn’t come easily, especially to a mind like this one (pointing at my head), where ideas flit from one thought-flower to the next like a bee collecting pollen. But just as everything else, it is—I am—a work in progress.
Change is, as Eli (from Fallen) would say. The best time to start is now.
Image credits:
Busy Professional, Photo by Anna Shvets on Pexels.
Time Flies, Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash.
This Head, Photo by Ketut Subiyanto on Pexels.