Time (You Ain't No Friend of Mine)

I worry about running out of time.

I am an organized person. I have no problem scheduling my day. My alarm is already set for 6:00 a.m. tomorrow, my second alarm for 6:15. The plan is to work out, shower, eat breakfast. I hope I'll have time for writing before work but I'm not positive. After work, I plan to spend about 2 hours on freelance work. Then I want to read my fantasy novel, play Mario Galaxy 2 on the Wii, catch up on my magazines, watch an episode of The Following, eat dinner, blog, and spend time with Aaron. But I'll never accomplish all that tomorrow, even if I wake up exactly on time (I won't) and don't nap after work (I will).

One of the saddest things I ever read was "I'll never be able to read all the books I want to read." When I read this, I felt like I'd been slapped in the face. This had never even occurred to me! Even if I made it through my entire list of books I want to read, by the time I finished, sooo many more books would have been published. And I would want to read them! And that's not even mentioning the magazines, and the blogs, and the newspapers. It's impossible.

But recently, Aaron said something even more terrifying. He said, "My nightmare: waiting until too late in life to start something, like writing a book, and not being able to finish." Aaahhhh! Another thing to worry about!

I want to have time to live my life the way that I want. But what do I want? I want to live somewhere cool, working any job and not caring about a career, just enjoying my place and time in the world. But I want to have a full career doing something I love and that I'm good at. I want to raise children and love them, but I also want to live a long, childless life, full of travel and free from worries about school systems and the effect of technology on developing brains and rocks stuck inside little noses.

Maybe I'm so afraid of running out of time because I don't know what I want. I don't know if I want to live in one place, or have the opportunity to move around. I don't know if I want children. I don't know if I'd prefer to have a long-time career path or not. I don't know what my life should be, and I don't want to miss out on it while I'm trying to decide.

But I do know that I want enough time to read all the books.