Passing Time

I feel like I’m running out of time.

It’s not like my clocks are set to run faster than anyone else’s. Or that I live in the future, or the past, or whatever. As far as I know, I still live in the same time dimension as everyone else.

But I still feel like I’m running out of time, all the time.

Have you ever felt that way? Like days just pass by, and soon they’re weeks, and then months, and before you know it, the year is over. And you feel like the days pass by without leaving a mark, and sometimes I can’t even remember what happened at a certain time – as in I have a hard time recalling what I did last Tuesday, or last Saturday.

I hate it the most on weekends – when all of sudden, the weekend is ending, and I’m back to the daily grind. I feel sad because it’s another week, and it feels like everything’s the same even if in reality, it’s not. I mean, my job is anything but routinary. Or perhaps it’s not about the routine, but how things just seem so endless, and sometimes, pointless.

Thinking about all of that – how endless and pointless it all seems – makes me exhausted, to the point that I just want to stop, and stay in bed. The most I was excited about was doing nothing, and when faced with commitments outside, I get stressed out because again, I feel like I’m always running out of time. Like there isn’t enough time for me to do the things I need to do for my commitments…

…and yet I still have time to sleep in, to read, to lounge around and do things. I have time to do that, while finishing the things I said I finished.

Then I go through it all again, and I’m just tired, and all I want to do is sleep and rest.

But then there are those commitments.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

I swear, this must be where personal crisis comes from.

Time stops for no one.

I’ve been trying to figure out why I feel this way, and I keep on pointing it to how I am still settling into my new role at work. But it’s not just that, isn’t it? I mean, work is work, and it can be endless, but it’s not always the reason why I feel these things. Perhaps it’s because I’m back to managing our household, and I’m not so used to doing it again (even if I should be, especially since I do it every year anyway). Things are changing and changing and I am so out of my comfort zone, and I feel like I cannot keep up, and sometimes I panic and I want to yell STOP, because I need time to orient myself.

At first I thought that I am afraid of running out of time, but really, I’m afraid of running out of time for myself. That’s the thing with being so used to having time for myself in the past years – I feel like I’m entitled to it, even when I should be spending a better part of my day working. The reality is, I am not running out of time for myself – it would only happen if I let it, and I always have a choice. No matter how busy or crazy things get, I still have a choice. I forget that sometimes. I need to draw clearer lines, build better boundaries and respect them. And I need to remember that things do end, even if they seem so endless when I’m in the midst of it. They always end (even if it means something else starts right after).

I think the thing I need to do is to make time for the things that matter to me. I need to figure out what they are, and fight to have time for it. I am not a slave to my circumstances, and like I said: I always have a choice. So I need to make a choice to make time for the people and the things that give me joy. I need to resist the urge to lie down and do nothing, avoid sleeping in so I can wake up earlier and have time to do something that I want to do. There is a time for rest, yes, and I recognize and honor that, but more than half the time I say I am tired and I need rest, it’s just me being lazy. I need to distinguish which is which, so I know when to surrender to rest, and to fight the laziness.

I need to carve time for these important things, because if I don’t, then no one will.

Stop hitting the panic button.

I need to learn to be still. I need to remember that all of this in my life is just a period, and there’s infinitely more things that will happen later on. This is just a drop in the ocean, and it’s really not worth panicking over.

Relax, self. It’s okay, it’s all good. You are not running out of time.

After all, I serve and love a God who is the Author of Time, and He loves me back. What am I so afraid of?