Time Marches On, With Or Without You

During a rare, recent moment of motivation, I was clearing out my drafts folder – because honestly, who needs 100s of drafts cluttering up their mind and space? Nestled between outdated to-do lists, random notes, and calendar reminders, I came across a half-finished post: 3 Things I Learned After One Full Month Inside.

Written exactly one month ago, it was after we’d been on lockdown/quarantine/stay-at-home orders/whatever you choose to call it for a full calendar month. It was also a few days after my self-imposed daily writing challenge ended.

It had two main points, some random tangents, and… that’s it. An abrupt end; unfinished, raw, and barely fleshed out. At 150 words; it was barely a tweet, much less a blog post. I never came up with, or wrote down, a third lesson, so the idea got pushed aside and subsequently forgotten.

Until today.

Only one month has passed, but it feels like a lifetime. Here’s hoping that I can finally articulate what I learned and apply it, because what I learned is that

time never stops moving forward.

What I originally wrote: All things considered – like the fact that most of us are on lockdown and there’s no real distinction between… well, anything anymore, April flew by. At times, it felt like everything should completely, collectively pause, but a part of me knew how implausible that would be. April ended in the blink of an eye, but unfortunately, I’m no closer to my goals.

What I should have written: I wanted this to be a turning point. C19 restrictions forced people to slow down and reassess. As the days passed and melted into one long stretch of time, I couldn’t help but compare myself to the curated life of others; those who seemingly had all the time in this new world.

People were posting about learning a new language. Some took up baking (the words “sourdough starter” appeared on my newsfeed more times than I could count). For a few weeks, all I heard about was Tiger King and Carole Baskin (still never watched an episode). Shortly after families binged their way through Netflix, the obsession turned to puzzles; for a while, every place was sold out, along with Lysol and Clorox wipes.

During those first few weeks at home, I didn’t feel like I gained any extra time. In theory, I should have; my morning commute went from upwards of an hour to the amount of time it took to roll out of bed, brush my teeth, and stumble down the stairs to my makeshift workspace on the bar.

The takeaway: With April, and subsequently May, being over in the blink of an eye, I realized that it’s up to me to manage my time better and focus my energy on accomplishing what matters. It’s the only way to inch closer to my goals.

It’s the reason I stopped making excuses and bought a domain name. It’s the reason I’m posting this now, even though I worry it’s not good enough.

I’m a perfectionist, but all that really means is that I hold myself to a standard so high, it’s impossible to live up to. Everything I do needs to be perfect; if I feel it won’t be, I often give up before even starting.

But just because something doesn’t start out at the level I want it to be, doesn’t mean it won’t get there.

Time will always continue to move forward, whether we resist or go along for the ride. If we resist, we will still be carried onward, it will just be without the things we wanted to take with us. Since I can’t control or stop it, I need to make the most of it. And I need to document the journey, because if I don’t know where I started from, I won’t know how far I’ve come.