Racing Toward 100
I was talking to my wife the other day and mentioned a book I wanted to read. She then countered with the fact that there's really not enough time in either of our lives to read all the good books we want to read. We're both so busy with living life, paying bills, raising kids, and the rest of it that reading fits into the last 45 minutes of our day, if we're lucky. It's hard to get through a book, 45 minutes at a time, but we still make an effort because we both love to read.
Fast forward to today. It was another one of those days. No, not a bad day, just a day of recognizing the urgency with which I feel I need to live my life. I watched a video on Donald Miller's site that was just people from 1 to 100 years old saying their age. It was interesting to see the change in people's faces as the video went along. More importantly, it reminded me how short life is.
I've got a friend in the GIS field who just lost his vision. It's coming back slowly, but it was a blindsiding scare for him and his family. I've got another writing friend who is a breast cancer survivor who dodged a serious bullet and now wears the scars of cancer as reminders of what could have been. I have a third friend who just had a difficult surgery done near her brain. It was successful, but it could have gone awry just as easily. I have two other friends who are under breast cancer "watches." Nothing like throwing the "unknown possibilities" into an already bad deal.
Throw into that the public figures that have passed in the last week or so. Roger Ebert, Margaret Thatcher and Annete Funicello all within a week. These are some of my childhood heroes. The list goes on and on. And while I know all of this is spurred on by the loss of my brother, that doesn't take away the sense that I am running in quicksand. Turning 50 sure didn't help either.
I've much to do, and the damn clock is ticking so loud I can hear it over my tinnitus.
I feel like I can't even type this blog fast enough to get it done so I can get to the next important thing I need to do. I know I'm young, (relatively) and in good shape (for 51), but you never know, do you? If I keel over walking to work tomorrow, I'm going to be pissed. If I have an aneurysm in bed tonight because I mixed licorice herbal tea with a disgustingly rich chocolate mint cupcake, well, someone please feed the dog. Oh, and if I should keel over at my keyboard at work, please log me off.
And for God's sake, if I'm struck by lightning, someone please finish editing my book and see that it gets published posthumously. Donate the proceeds to charity.
There's fish to be caught, kids to graduate and marry off, grand kids to spoil, careers to be closed out, books to be written, poems to be read, movies to be cried over, dogs to love-bury-miss, music to be danced to, friends to laugh with, a wife to grow old with, classes to be taken, people to serve, people to love and laugh with, and God in heaven to thank and praise for it all every day.
So, with a little luck, this feeling will subside a bit and I won't feel as manic from day to day as I do at the moment. I need to remember that there is a time for stopping and sitting too. I need to understand that "productivity" can mean just sitting here admiring my daughter on the love seat across from me texting in her winter coat in April because the house is drafty mostly because its old and leaky. I need to understand that if all goes well, I won't die tomorrow, or this week or this year, and that I'll be fine if I just make the most out of each day.
And if I live to be 100, well, the friggin' joke's on me.
Blogging off...
Fast forward to today. It was another one of those days. No, not a bad day, just a day of recognizing the urgency with which I feel I need to live my life. I watched a video on Donald Miller's site that was just people from 1 to 100 years old saying their age. It was interesting to see the change in people's faces as the video went along. More importantly, it reminded me how short life is.
I've got a friend in the GIS field who just lost his vision. It's coming back slowly, but it was a blindsiding scare for him and his family. I've got another writing friend who is a breast cancer survivor who dodged a serious bullet and now wears the scars of cancer as reminders of what could have been. I have a third friend who just had a difficult surgery done near her brain. It was successful, but it could have gone awry just as easily. I have two other friends who are under breast cancer "watches." Nothing like throwing the "unknown possibilities" into an already bad deal.
Throw into that the public figures that have passed in the last week or so. Roger Ebert, Margaret Thatcher and Annete Funicello all within a week. These are some of my childhood heroes. The list goes on and on. And while I know all of this is spurred on by the loss of my brother, that doesn't take away the sense that I am running in quicksand. Turning 50 sure didn't help either.
I've much to do, and the damn clock is ticking so loud I can hear it over my tinnitus.
I feel like I can't even type this blog fast enough to get it done so I can get to the next important thing I need to do. I know I'm young, (relatively) and in good shape (for 51), but you never know, do you? If I keel over walking to work tomorrow, I'm going to be pissed. If I have an aneurysm in bed tonight because I mixed licorice herbal tea with a disgustingly rich chocolate mint cupcake, well, someone please feed the dog. Oh, and if I should keel over at my keyboard at work, please log me off.
And for God's sake, if I'm struck by lightning, someone please finish editing my book and see that it gets published posthumously. Donate the proceeds to charity.
There's fish to be caught, kids to graduate and marry off, grand kids to spoil, careers to be closed out, books to be written, poems to be read, movies to be cried over, dogs to love-bury-miss, music to be danced to, friends to laugh with, a wife to grow old with, classes to be taken, people to serve, people to love and laugh with, and God in heaven to thank and praise for it all every day.
So, with a little luck, this feeling will subside a bit and I won't feel as manic from day to day as I do at the moment. I need to remember that there is a time for stopping and sitting too. I need to understand that "productivity" can mean just sitting here admiring my daughter on the love seat across from me texting in her winter coat in April because the house is drafty mostly because its old and leaky. I need to understand that if all goes well, I won't die tomorrow, or this week or this year, and that I'll be fine if I just make the most out of each day.
And if I live to be 100, well, the friggin' joke's on me.
Blogging off...
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