Where Does The Time Go?

Where does the time go? One minute I’m sitting in a classroom wishing I wasn’t, and the next I’m sitting in an office staring at a computer with the same spreadsheet I opened thirty years ago and still haven’t finished it. I went from running in a playground to get in the lunch queue first, to running to the bathroom because I can longer control my bladder. Being surrounded with laughter and cheer when I walked into a room, now only silence and glares from other disgruntled adults who aren’t happy with their lives.

I no longer stare at the clock hoping it will speed up. No, I now hope it slows or even stops because life is like grains of sand and mine has all but slipped through my fingers. Time is all but gone from me now, my mind an empty trophy case. All those dreams and achievements that were never fulfilled. So much potential wasted, all because I subscribed to the notion you must follow the set path of life.

One: Do well in school.
Two: Get a good job.
Three: Work hard and get promoted.
Four: Find a wife and have children.
Now five is very important so you must not forget it.
Five: Keep working until you drop dead.

I look back now with hindsight and realize the absurdity of it but I wish I had seen it sooner. I failed with step one, I got a little lucky with step two and landed an ok paying job. Step three is where I have been stuck. I have put every waking second of my life into this job but that promotion has never come, so now I fear I have skipped step four and already towards the end of step five.

You may say try something new, meet new people but I do not see how that will help now. I am in too deep, there is no escape. Where there was once light, is now gone. A reminder to those that find themselves reading this, go out and live before it is too late. Before you have a chance to subscribe to the fallacy of life, do the things you are passionate about even if it may not be what others think is best for you. Otherwise you may find yourself trapped in the same four walls, sitting in the same worn out chair, staring at that same spreadsheet wondering what life could have been if you had just been yourself. If I can leave you with something to remember me by, it would be this. It’s your life, you make the rules.