The Time I Kill

Dear Brightstar,

I  treasured your last letter Brighstar because it I know you are under a great deal of pressure. My own letter is written in response to your description of suffocating moments when you feel the weight of making decisions. It is  a few simple thoughts on how we judge our lives through hours but I hope it provides some stillness.

Time worries me constantly. There seem to be some many things I am waiting to do with my life. Projects and discoveries I am seeking to fit into my youth so I am prepared for the future. And a chorus of questions to accompany me. Am I working hard enough now to achieve everything I want to in life? Am I missing good hours here and now while I struggle for the future? How much is too much and at which point does worrying get redundant.

I know I am happier if not happy and better then I was a year ago (and a year before that). I am ageing and it is within the realm of possibility that with age I am getting somewhere. But its never so easy to convince oneself that we are spending our time well.

The time I kill is killing me. – Mason Cooley

The title of this page comes from a quote I keep above my desk (ostensibly to motivate my work). Thinking about hours as wasted can inspire us to action but I wonder more and more whether the stress and tension this mentality fosters makes me less productive overall. Downtime or “wasted time” seems to soothe me in a way I can’t do any other way. The less I rush myself the more I know and like myself.

We choose how we measure our time and then we judge these hours expecting it to be an appraisal of the trajectory of our lives. The divides we create, measured by these hours, are artificial but are strongly felt.

The truth is that time is probably exactly what we make it to be whether we choose friend, foe, companion or muse. When I tell myself I am behind time I am merely setting myself up to judge myself harshly. I wonder what I could have done in the past years with a different mantra.

So Brightstar, I leave you with all my love and support from across the ocean. I suggest you guard how you think about the issues you are in the midst of and watch how you perceive the hours in your life. How you choose to approach these questions may just determine how you feel forced to live. 

With my thoughts and good wishes,

Keatsway

“When the world feels all jittery . . .”

Dear Keatsway,

On weeks when my head is spinning with too many ideas and I can’t seem to sit still, I try to remember everything I’ve read to somehow put into words what seems incomprehensible inside my head:

When the world feels all jittery, like it just quit smoking, and the questions of my soul start to sound like a heavy metal concert gone awry, I find I must . . .    -Tamara Park, Sacred Encounters

Except the must part doesn’t apply to me here. Park wrote that travel stills her, but for me I find that travel just unleashes a pandora’s box, igniting a desire to plan more trips instead of plan my life.  And at this moment that is precisely what I don’t need. But the jitteriness and soul questions and thoughts beginning to sound like a heavy metal concert gone awry, that I can relate to perfectly.

These last few weeks my thoughts been swimming with what ifs and I long for a doable action, not a detour, to propel me in the right direction. The idea of what I am supposed to do with the rest of my life is overwhelming and suffocating at times. In those moments every second seems to be laced with an extraordinary weight.

But there are still the hours, aren’t there? One and then another, and you get through that one and then, my god, there’s another.  –Michael Cunningham, The Hours

What if every plan I thought would be in place by now, as I stand at the precipice of my twenties, has not come to pass, what then? Do I make a new plan? And what if I discover that I am more attached to “the plan” than living out the extraordinary ordinariness of my life?

We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep-it’s as simple and ordinary as that. A few jump out of windows or drown themselves or take pills; more die by accident; and most of us, the vast majority, are slowly devoured by some disease or, if we’re very fortunate, by time itself. There’s just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we’ve ever imagined, though everyone but children (and perhaps even they) know these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the mornings; we hope, more than anything, for more.  –Michael Cunningham, The Hours

When my heart is heavy with unfulfilled dreams and uncertainty, all I can do is crawl under the covers in the fetal position until I don’t feel anything else. Eventually I come up for air and when I do I open a book.  I escape  through other character’s stories until the wee hours  of the morning pass and I can no longer keep my eyes open.  For years I’ve been escaping–sometimes referred to as taking a book binge–through dystopic literature and fantasy when my own life became too vulnerable and uncertain.  Maybe somehow by reading about another life, time and place I can pick up some extra bravery and navigation skills to manage my own.

In the meant time I need to acknowledge the incredible gift of being accepted into a graduate program in England. Whether or not I accept, defer for a year (how does one put one’s dreams on hold for an entire year?), or completely change my mind about it entirely –due to hefty price tags, doubling student loans, lack of scholarships, lack of parental approval– this acceptance is a good thing and it can lead to open doors in places I hadn’t expected.

None of this trepidation and decision making will go away anytime soon; this I know. Not for a while. But in the meantime I got this post down on paper. The one I never thought I would publish. And I discovered my own way of stilling my mind, conquering the hours, and remaining undefeated by unfinished dreams: following the stories of strong, female characters  who have conquered fire breathing dragons (or their equivalent) when I need inspiration to defeat my own.

xo, Brightstar