014. Fickle Mistress
Time is a fickle mistress.
Before the launch of this platform, I wrote a few pieces that I thought would be my starting line-up. Initially, my goal was to produces 4 pieces of written work. When I managed to get two ideas down that I thought would be good pacesetters for the tone and purpose of the platform, that goal was adjusted to launching the platform with 4 opening pieces - enough to entertain and captivate a passer-by.
As you may know, that is not what happened. Life had other plans. One of those situations where your phone rings as you're about to sit down for breakfast and your day takes form in a way you simply could not have anticipated. However, this day lasted weeks. My plans were completely buried by the urgency of the matter that was at hand and it was all just survival from there.
Having had heightened the scope of my goal, I found myself battling a sense of stalled productivity - wondering how and when I could return to my life, return to my routine. Unfortunately, those were just things that fell outside the scope of my control. I found myself feeling like a remnant of myself, running on survival mode, just waiting for a window of relief to open.
Writing about it now, it sounds kind of selfish. It all centres and focuses on how my life felt like it was being derailed. However, as far as I am concerned, we only experience life from a first-person perspective. Meaning, you, perceiving. Interpreting the environment around you and responding accordingly. Since we also exist in a society, 'we', then follows. So, the order remains, me/you then, we/us. So, I can only truly speak on my experience of the time.
Days would come and go, each one feeling longer than the last. Yet, I continued to struggle to carve out a moment for myself. The world continued to turn, and the deadlines I had were fast approaching. Each day closer but, nothing to hold or to show for the moments past. I simply felt haunted. Worst of all, I feared I would come out the other side with my ambition and motivation lost.
I suppose the nice thing about goals you set yourself is that you can wake up one day and just change or readjust them. I had already done so by scaling-up my opening line-up but, it felt harder to now return to the original plan. I guess I had already grown fond of this ideal entry that it only felt reductive to go about it any other way. However, time was moving and those additional 2 pieces I had envisioned, I now struggled to find the words to write. The time had come, and gone, without me realising.
Sometime ago, I tasked myself with looking back at my life. Looking through my 'successes' and 'failures', not as reflections of my character but, simply as data collected. Looking at them as experiences from which lessons could be drawn.
What the exercise showed me was that, sometimes we claim failure when it is not necessary. Choices I once blamed myself for, became the reasons for my successes at later points. Claiming failure when I was simply responding the circumstances at hand then began to feel like a practice of self-harm - choosing to keep myself in torment for reasons that were out of my control.
If you blink, you will truly miss it. It is astonishing how quickly night can turn into day and, it is a wonder how much can be accomplished in a day. Some days are truly 3 hours long, and some feel like many lifetimes lived. Then, there are weeks that feel like a never-ending day.
'We', exist in a society. As a result, our plans have a weird way of changing form. This awareness, I have found to be meaningless, especially in those moments when the vision you created doesn't play out just as you imagined. Time has a strange way of changing everything. If you allow it, you might come to find that in the end, it has a way of benefiting you. However, you have to be open to viewing experiences that may feel like shortcomings as simply, data collected.
It all seems so long ago now, but, that was only three months ago. A period that felt endless, came and went. I know that I will likely never understand how time works but, what I do know is, time is a fickle mistress. You must allow yourself to be present in the experience of it because, this too shall pass.
To you my loyal reader, knowing that you are out there in your pocket of the world motivates me to continue writing. So, I thank you for coming back today and I hope you are back here tomorrow.
It is time again for me to end the day knowing I have done all that I could, and it was the best that I could. Bonne journee, dear reader.
