Time... and Stuff...

It feels like a long time since I last wrote.

Well, I did write a few pieces but not much since then. But it’s not because there is nothing to write about but rather, there is no time to write about things – and there are a lot of things that I want to write about.

Being in a relationship makes you change your priorities. You have to… otherwise you’ll lose sight of the most important things in your life – and that is the relationship that you build with your life partner. I’d rather lose everything than lose that human connection that completes my soul.

It is cliché, I know. How art takes a back seat when the artist is in love…

But love will ultimately have to triumph.

Or one faces the prospect of a failed relationship that may indeed provide the fuel to perfect the art but in the end, even if the art is honed, provides for a sad existence that cannot be denied.

I once dreamt of living the vagabond lifestyle of an artist, with only a car, a sleeping bag, camping gear, a laptop, a camera, my cat/dog and the road. I didn’t care where I would end up as long as I fulfilled my souls yearning. Whether I get published or whether my pieces would be found eaten by mold on a narrow stretch of wilderness someday, unread and forgotten was irrelevant – I just wanted to be free to explore and mope…

But in the same breathe, I yearned more for the warmth of a home, of a woman who will fill my soul with joy and love (and maybe nagging, LOL), and children who will fill my heart with their laughter. I dreamt of that little house in suburbia complete with that meticulously mowed lawn in springtime and summer with the kitchen facing the east….

God gives me the second one.

And everyday, I thank Him for the gift.

The former would have granted me the solitude that would have created opuses (probably) and the latter provides me with the sense of serenity and fulfillment that mellows down my need to write. I choose the latter over the former any day.

Time is gold. I know that now.

There are many things I really want to accomplish. A realignment of my bucket list for one to accommodate new dreams…

And fear, a new kind of fear comes knocking…

Fear, that I don’t have time to accomplish these dreams…. Fear of failing…mostly… finances and stuff…

There was once a time when we thought we had all the time in the world. Remember? Well, time catches up and when we face it, suddenly we realize a lot of things… which we wouldn’t have seen otherwise.

I’m 31 for one. In nine years, I’ll be forty. That’s middle age as most of us see it. That is the time when the body starts to go downhill – the bones start aching, the muscles starts to sag, and the will to wake up to cold mornings start to sap our strength.

It is also the time when we say goodbye to the fiery will of youth and adulthood, when age and frailty makes us begrudgingly accept the limitations that life gives… a time of surrender, if you will… time to resist the flow and time to go where the tides of life takes us.

I want a career. I want a stable job that will give me enough for a mortgage, food, utilities and a few bucks for those trips taken outside to hiking trails, Banff and Johnston Canyon (and maybe the occasional camping trip to BC). I want a career that will free give me time to spend with my family…

Time to play monopoly or scrabble on game night; time to watch a movie on Movie Night; time to take my kids to school and to wait for them when dismissal bell rings; time to spend with my wife to dance on Fridays and that once a month date with just the two of us; time to tinker on the garage during weekends; and maybe time to pound the keyboard as I do now…

I don’t want second jobs that will eat that time away, of having to contend with no weekends because I need to work…

These destroy family: lack of time to spend for those who truly matter.

I have no desire to be rich, to have that second house or that cabin… those are luxuries that are maybe gifts if and when they might be possible. I just want to have enough time to spend with the people who matter and that is my family.

It is normal, I think for people to be afraid.

It is part of life.

My fiancé says: God will provide… and there is no need to worry…

‘I know’ I answer… but still… there is that moment when you cant help yourself.

It is one of the things that make us painfully human.