The tyranny of time

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I once had to do an essay on time for a writing contest when I was in school.  While I was a good writer, it was not a strong subject for me and I bombed.  Ironically, I erased a good deal of what I had written and rewrote with little time left that was allotted to complete the essay.  I wrote until the last minute ticked away mercilessly, and then I was out of, that’s right, time.

Now I’m 45 and doing much better at a lot of things time related, like punctuality.  I used to be a good ten minutes late everywhere, more than that for social engagements.  I always felt harried and nervous.  There were other reasons for that too, but running behind definitely doesn’t help.  That’s not to say I’m never late, but I know how to avoid it.  I’ve developed a greater sense of urgency which kicks in before it’s too late to have any chance of getting ready and getting there on time.  So that’s being on time,  better.

Then there’s time management.  Let’s look at the everyday first.  There’s work. No choice how long you’re there.  And some people drive a good ways to their jobs.  I don’t.  I don’t know how people can drive an hour and a half or more each way, 5 days a week.  That’s crazy to me.  It’s too big a time investment.  I don’t want my life to be about work. I want time to put into things I want to do for personal enrichment, enjoyment, and to secure my future.  That last one refers to writing.  Of course, I seem to find all kinds of things to stall before writing, even housework.  It has to be done, but it can wait.

We measure time in hours and minutes through the daily grind, while months and years seem to slip by.  A couple of my new friends from church are older than me.  One just turned sixty and the other will be in the fall.  I commented to both of them how people always lament getting older even though they may seem young to someone else.  They both quickly responded that age is just a number.  As they are both active and don’t look or act their age, I think I should look at it that way too.  The thing is, I always focus on how much I thought I would have accomplished by a given age, and then I feel the passage of time like a weight.  I think, I’m forty-five and still haven’t completed anything significant with my writing.  I haven’t had a real meaningful relationship.  I haven’t traveled, haven’t done this, haven’t experienced that.  See the pattern?

I do try to look at things positively, to see what I have done.  It’s challenging for me because I’ve always been very hard on myself, but I’ve been through a lot, and I’ve grown as a person tremendously.  I conquered shyness, I’m more confident.  I went through health and career challenges.  I usually see the glass half full when it comes to other people or external situations, so I shall try to do that for myself.

I never got my bachelor’s degree becomes, I have an associate’s degree which I did while working and was the first in my family to get any kind of degree beyond high school.  I’m not a writer becomes, I’m in a much better job than any previous and have a regular schedule so I can plan my writing time. Forty-five goes from, too old to start on things I wish I’d done already to, a good age to take off running.  I’ve got so much more life experience now for writing material.  Robert Frost comes to mind as one of many whose careers started in their forties.

I guess the important thing is that you take the next step whenever you come to it, whether you come to it at the time you had planned or expected, or not.  If the way is blocked you make a new path.  Detours can delay us, but make us stronger and wiser on the other side.   Impatience just makes the extra time wasted.  And the last thing anyone should do in this fleeting life is waste time.

Whatever step you need, or want to take next in your life,  take it as soon as you can, even if it’s just a little baby step.  Maybe that’s all it’s possible to do right now, but the action will affirm your intent and grow into resolution.

I almost feel bad for giving this post the title I gave it, but it’s how I’ve felt many times over the years.  Of course, you can’t halt the march of time, or even slow it.  You can watch the torrent go by from the shore, making you dizzy, or you can jump in and swim with the current.

Seize the day! Seize the moment!

The art of discipline

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A thought came to me years ago which still challenges me greatly.  “The disciplined artist succeeds.”

I mean artist in the broad sense of the word.  Writer, musician, painter, photographer, filmmaker, etc.  I also mean those who engage in artistic activities, not just those who make a living at it.  An artist at heart.

I think most of us tend to be indulgent sorts, sometimes overly so.  Partying, experimenting, addictions.  Artists need and want to experience things in order to reproduce some part of life in their work.  That can lead to trouble.  I just quit smoking last October, and hit the bottle pretty hard for a while about four years ago.  Of course, these things aren’t unique to artists, but they can be more damaging to a creative soul.

But even if one doesn’t wander into more serious traps, it can still be very difficult to discipline oneself to stick to something to fruition.  I know it’s tough for me to finish one thing before moving on to another.  I switch from a short story to a screenplay to poetry.

It’s also a struggle to sit down and write.  Maybe writers are the worst. “I hate writing, I love having written.”  says Dorothy Parker.   I personally can find a million things to do before writing.  It’s why my evenings after work get away from me, night after night, week after week for months and years.  I remember reading in a textbook for a writing class at community college in which the author admonished the reader that it’s possible to think of yourself as a writer your whole life and never actually achieve it.  It won’t happen to me.  That was my reaction.  A fervent and immediate reaction.  I’m 45 and it hasn’t happened yet.  Fortunately, I’ve got this discipline thing down.  Ha! I kill me. Anyway,  I’m working on it.

I’ve realized that discipline is a demanding mistress.  It doesn’t like to share.  The times that I’ve gotten the most done are when I’m on a whole life discipline kick.  I start working out, quit smoking, getting up when the alarm goes off,  being on time and writing.  It feels good and keeps you going.  If you recognize your triggers that make you slack off, nip it in the bud!  When one area slides, others will follow down that slippery slope.

Discipline gets you from inspiration to completion.

Ever have a great idea that you can’t wait to get started on, but once you get it started, you get bogged down in the details.  It’s frustrating when that spark of elation turns into, well, work.  Keep pushing through it.  It will be worth it.  I hope to see you at the finish line.  Maybe I’ll be waiting for you.  Maybe you’ll be waiting for me.  Here’s to the race.

 

A closer walk

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First post in a long time.  I’m going to make them regularly again.  And this time I mean it.  Ahem.

I recently started going to church again.  Don’t worry if you’re not religious.  Neither am I.  This is far from an evangelical endeavor.  I merely want to share some of my thoughts and feelings about God and spirituality.

A little background to start: As I used to tell people, I’m not a “born again” Christian.  I’m a born and raised Christian.  Been in church as long as I can remember, and before that.  I remember accepting Jesus when I was about 7 or 8 along with my brother and a friend in our living room at my mother’s guidance.  No bells or whistles went off, and I honestly didn’t feel any big weight lifted off my shoulders or even a warm fuzzy feeling.  I was pretty young after all, and pretty well behaved.  Not that much to confess.  I did feel like I’d just done something important, though, and that it was a commitment.

I stayed true to that commitment for most of my life, with a period of deistic distance. More on that later. I did the Sunday School and church thing with my family as a child and young adult.  I don’t regret or resent it like many people do.  At least, not the church-going itself.  More on that later, too.  I actually enjoyed Sunday School and youth group as a teen, and I even liked the monthly mission nights when we had guests tell of their experiences on their mission trips for the church all over the country and the world.  I always wanted to travel, (Still do.) and this was a chance to hear about how people lived in other parts of our nation and around the globe.

I was a little “luke-warm” toward God the last couple years of high school and through the college years, just due to scholastic distractions.  But I still attended church regularly.  It was during a year and a half break between colleges, while still living at home, that I had a faith renewal.  One of those guest speakers in the missions department, was giving the main message one Sunday.  He spoke of several times in his life when, what could be described as miraculous events, occurred, like a very large man (angel) appearing behind him and a companion when facing several menacing would-be attackers.  I don’t clearly remember the other incidences. I didn’t think much of it at first, but then I thought about it.  I reasoned that if I really believed in this whole God thing, then couldn’t the missionary man’s tales be true?  I opened my mind to the possibilities.  I went to nearby Minsi Lake after church and looked to the seagull-filled mostly sunny sky and I felt liberated – from doubt.  It would return.

In the meantime, though, I delved into scriptures and prayer, and self discovery like never before.  It really helped me to grow as a person.  I would pray the whole way on my half hour commute and found that I repeated the same things everyday, so I started to try and rephrase things from day to day.  Much to my surprise, doing so often made me realize the answer to my prayer, whether it was what I was looking for or not.

The down side was that I started to get a self-righteous, pious attitude.  I only listened to Christian music, and at work, Focus on the Family started the daily line-up of biblical sound bites pumping through my headphones.  The Christian Right movement was steadily increasing its entanglement of The Church at that time.  I was nearly sucked in before seeing the light.  To think, I almost voted for Bob Dole.  Thank God, I departed from the political invasion of Christianity.

Between national politics, church politics and moving out, my church going days were soon to see a hiatus.  My home church had gone through a split a few years earlier, after which we got a very warm, loving, and bright younger pastor.  My family and I loved him.  But the old people who sit in the back with their old money, saw fit to send him packing.  Even my parents emigrated to another church then, and I had moved 45 minutes away to Allentown.  I tried a few different churches, but the disillusionment was too great to overcome my fatigue of working two jobs, so Sundays became just a chance to sleep in.

I didn’t throw out the baby Jesus with the bath water.  I maintained a belief in God.  I just wasn’t really “feeling” it.  At times I was borderline agnostic, but the doubts never totally took over.  I guess you could say I was a Deist, believing that God exists, but feeling like his major work was done and he didn’t get too involved in things down here.

It was during this time of reduced influence of Christianity in my life, that I first dared to think what I always knew.  What if I was just gay?  No psychological or moral solutions.  It just is.  Now was the time for resentment to set in, but not against my own church or any pastors, or even my parents, too much.  It was just the teachings of Christianity that have been held for centuries.  Being gay is a sin, and any kind of pre-marital sex is immoral.  I could’ve had so much fun.

For years, I just attended my parents’ new church on holidays and once in a while got out my Bible and read a chapter a day, for two or three days.  So when I returned to church, I’ll admit, it was largely to seek social connections.  I’d found a gay friendly church.  In fact, straight people are scarce in those attending.

I joined as a member on Easter Sunday with 6 other sinners.  Lightning did not strike a single one of us.  I’m glad I joined and I want to stay involved, but it would be dishonest to say all doubt is completely and irrevocably dispelled.

Sometimes, I still wonder if God hears my prayers word for word.  How can he hear billions of thoughts and words at once?  I can believe that we are connected through the Holy Spirit, though.  Maybe it’s the actual words, or maybe it’s more of a spiritual stream of emotion and energy.  Either one is pretty miraculous.  I can even believe in something more abstract, but I believe in God and I believe we all have eternal souls.

Another challenge is a feeling of resistance, even rebellion, when I hear that we’re supposed to put God first in our lives, in everything.  Am I not honoring God by working on things that will help me be complete and reach my potential?  Like writing.  Should I go to a Wednesday night Bible study, or write another blog post about all this?

Tomorrow will tell.  I have much more to say on the whole subject.  Comments are welcome.