Time-- And How I Got Okay About Not Having Any of It

I'm going to be 37 tomorrow.

In the last few weeks leading up to this date, I've been thinking mostly about my state of happiness. Assessing and stacking up my successes next to my failures, as well as being brutally honest about my strengths and weaknesses as it pertains to checking off accomplishments and goals that I am striving for. I was happy to discover that things stacked up pretty well, however there was one set of stacks that were the most telling about my future, and it was the most troubling. It was when I took a look at my time vs my determination. It was the most unbalanced out of everything I had mulled over. A big towering stack of determination and a little teeny tiny pile of time. That was bad news for me.

if you have your time and determination purring in harmony, and on top of that plenty of it to wield at your will, there isn't anything that you can't do. I recently watched some short films on creatives that had dramatically changed the course of their lives after layoffs or setbacks. Some of them had just woke up one day and started being honest that they were miserable in their current fields, and then they did something about it. The one thing I noticed that they all had in common, was they had the time on their hands to do something about it. They mention frequently how much time it took them to get started, and how much time they put into making this thing they were after perfect. It's funny when you hear these kinds of success stories and it's centered around a single man or a single woman, they speak about how they tuned out their friends and a social life, cut themselves off, put themselves on an island, they put their heads down and solely went after what they wanted. When it is a similar success story about someone who has a family, all the talk is about support systems and how they couldn't have done it without their partner, their spouse taking over an entire aspect of their life for them so that this new achievement could be possible. They are given the gift of time.

Do you ever watch the Academy awards and feel really terrible when the actor or actress that's standing there sobbing over their trophy is going on and on about how they could never ever have done this without the sacrifice they made away from their loved ones? And then they show the crowd shot and you see their partner crying just as hard. I think about those tears and how complex it all is in that moment. There are for sure happy and proud tears pouring out, but along with it there has to be regret over missing one another, moments they will never get back of their kids growing up, an absence and a distance that has to be mended between all of them. It's always sad to watch, mostly because I think of the people that attempt this and that don't have the same successes, the people that can't hold up to the pressure of putting everything on the other persons shoulders. All the failed attempts that lead to resentments and families breaking up over the promise of results-- "if you just sacrifice everything for me, I can do this great thing!" and then they don't. It's brutal.

I don't want to be in the position where after achieving my goals, and I am relishing the feeling of accomplishment, look back on how I was able to pull it off, and realize it was because I gave up the one thing that I have done right so far. I'm about to be 37 and just now figuring out that I have everything I ever wanted in my personal and romantic life, and that isn't anything I want to gamble with. Having that personal happiness and balance takes just as much work and time to maintain as it does to balance a career. It isn't effortless, and anyone that says it is either is lying or lying. It is work.

Something my mother beat into my head when I was a kid, and this is definitely filed under the "maybe she shouldn't have said shit like this to me when i was a kid" folder, but she said: "It's possible to not be able to stand someone you love." and then she would kind of look at me like, "you know what I mean... you know?!" and then nudge me with her elbow. Basically this was her telling me I was a huge annoying asshole of a teenager, which I absolutely was. My point is, knowing that this is possible-- I don't ever question Cole's love for me, but I'm not fool enough to think that love protects me from being hateable or annoying.

I think where this has led me is despite my drive to live a creative life, I have to find a way to not react to the frustration of how much longer it's going to take me to get to where I want to be since I am unwilling to bury my head and work possessed by the end goal. I have too many other people to consider. So it's time I let go of it as a frustration. It cannot become a regret. I will not let it turn into resentment. I don't have the time that other people have. I didn't start this when I was 17. I started this when I was in my thirties and had a family and it was already too late. So of course it's going to take longer. duh.

Each year I get a little older, and each year I try and let go of something in my life that will allow me to move forward with some more grace.

So this year, I am going to relax about the time tables. I have the love of my life and hilarious beautiful creative children surrounding me, and they keep me magnetized and pulled close to them, and so if that means that it's going to take longer to get to where I want to be, that's fine. I am getting there with good company, and in good standing with all of them. In the end, we won't be strangers when we get there. Together.

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