September 4, 2022 ~ Sunday (late night/Monday early morning … 95° today though blissfully cool in the house now – finally/for once!)
It’s after midnight … I just turned off my window a/c unit but the three fans are still whirring up the dust in my tiny (now all autumn-decked) home. I should be in bed, waiting for Mr. Sandman to visit, counting sheep and/or luring all things slumber-related to come my way … but, here I am/sitting at my computer needing to get this out.
We all know I’m a “one and done” kind of gal … if I don’t get my thoughts down on paper – (aka my computer) as good/or otherwise as they may be – they are gone – as fleeting as Ethiopian marathon runners, first glances and teenage crushes.
I am organizing my office (still) and realized tonight that I’ve been here 100 days (and then some). Where does the time go? I have asked myself that very question several times tonight as I perused the contents of my files … old copies of this and that and then I came upon my writing folder …
I started a novel one day, long ago, as I sat at my kitchen counter. The words just poured out of me. I wrote for hours. It was a luxury and fabulously freeing and I remember the peace and contentment that washed over me when I stopped that afternoon … and whenever I’d pick up the story and add more to it.
Tonight I found a date on it … farther in the past than I ever expected … April 1993! WHAT???? I wrote that nearly 30 years ago??? How can that possibly be? I was so taken aback that it had been so long ago when I started that story. I dug farther into my file and found another story I wrote back in 2004 … and yet another all the way back in 1977. I was immediately awash in disbelief and a bit of (what I can only describe as) sorrow. How many years have I let go by without doing SOMETHING with these writings? How many stories are still in my head? How many titles and snippets of ideas are written down on scraps of paper/packed into that portfolio? Too many.
What have I been doing all these years?
Life. I’ve been “doing” life. You get busy with the day-to-day … with your marriage and house and kids and all those things that go with all those things. And suddenly, it’s 30 years later and you’re sitting on a loveseat in your living room at midnight wondering where the time went.
And, as I sat on that loveseat, in amazement at how quickly the time has flown and, at the same time, I was equally amazed at how it seems like no time has passed at all – like it was yesterday that those words flowed from my fingers.
Time … it’s elusive. We tend to think we have so much of it … but this year – probably because I’m now carrying a Medicare card – I’m feeling the crunch. That little voice inside me is suddenly not whispering anymore – it’s stronger, louder … telling me to DO SOMETHING!
It’s human nature, I think, to do our chores/make a living/put others and other things before ourselves. At least, I know, on my ever-present to-do list … anything personal is at the bottom and rarely gets done. But why do we do that? That which brings joy to our soul should be on the top of our list … or at least in the top half!
I know someone who wants to quit their job and seek out that which brings them joy and fulfillment. It’s a scary, gutsy and risky decision. But, from personal experience … the time is never right. It’s never the right time to quit your job, have a baby, move. Whatever that “thing” is … there is never a perfect or right time. You just have to do it.
And why not take that leap? That proverbial leap into the unknown … before life passes us by? It, this life/this time, goes by too fast to wait any longer. What am I (we) waiting for?
There’s a quote up on my bulletin board that states, “We can’t become what we desire, while staying who we are.” It’s time. The days are fleeting. Go pursue your joy.