I have no idea where the past few months (frankly, years) have gone. I feel like the last time I stopped to look I was 18 and had my whole life ahead of me, and now all of a sudden I'm... very much not that any more. This probably wasn't helped by recently running across a couple of (largely self-indulgent) articles around the internet along the lines of "30 things I've learned now that I've turned [multiple of ten]" in short succession, combined with my general state of tiredness. The sudden realisation of how much time I'd allowed to pass – and how little I'd managed to accomplish in it – hits hard every time.
I've noticed that I rely on the word "just" internally far too often when thinking about the future. I just need to get past this deadline/event/thing in a couple of weeks' time and then I'll have more time to spend on things I'd rather focus on. I just need to get this particular distraction finished off and then I can find time to do something more meaningful. The thing is, after that distraction, there's always going to be another, and after the next deadline there'll be one more a few weeks later, waiting to suck up all the available oxygen once again. And so the cycle goes on.
The truth is I've simply wasted a lot of time. I've put a lot of effort into things that either didn't matter or didn't work out, and as a result I have very little to show for my life to date.
That realisation has made me approach things lately with a sense of urgency that I honestly didn't think I was still capable of. The downside of that is that it's become an exhausting (and at times fairly unpleasant) way to live, but nonetheless I think I prefer it to the alternative. Hopefully it leads to better results.
I'm not writing this for any particular purpose, or with any great realisation in mind. I kind of just wanted to put this into words, so that it's there to come back to at some point in the future. I want to see this again in a year or two and be able to appreciate how much has changed. Here's hoping.