Are we going too fast?

On fearing the passage of time :)

true?

Something I’ve thought a lot about recently is the passage of time. I am getting older, and I’m scared. I’m turning 37 this year, and I think to myself, holy fuck that’s so old. But I suppose in the grand scheme of things it’s not. People a few years older than me would proudly say, “You’re young!!” But I have a special caveat for myself that I will lay out here: I feel old AND unaccomplished. So there!

I’m scared

I’ve never really “landed” at any given point in my adult life. Let me explain this term in the way my brain comprehends it. The dictionary definition of the word goes something like this: meaning to arrive, bring to rest (like an airplane or a jump), or successfully secure something. This kind of works for my personal meaning of the word, but not exactly.

“Landed” means you’ve settled into a life rhythm, a groove. Your job is good enough, fulfilling to a certain degree, you have little side hobbies or activities that keep you occupied in the areas your job doesn’t, and you have relatively standard routines that give you small moments of joy throughout the mundanity of being alive. The most important aspect of “landing” are third spaces outside of home & work — it can be a location such as the comfort of a cozy coffee shop, but it can also be found in people, in community.

literally me rn

Quiz time! Think to yourself… have you “landed” in your current life as you know it? The people several years older than me proclaiming, “You’re young!!” probably have.

The closest I got to this feeling was probably Year Seven living in Los Angeles, which began in 2019. My job was fine enough, I had creative endeavors under my belt, I had done activities on the side with community (i.e. AIDS/LifeCycle), and I enjoyed my apartment & neighborhood. My circle of friends had finally leveled out and became consistent & familiar. I walked to my little coffee shop down the street to sit & write. I had checked all the boxes of “landed” — but for whatever reason, I had ants in my pants, and I felt the urge to go back to school & move to yet another city mid-COVID.

twink on a bike

This fatal mistake ultimately ended me up on my ass back home & had put me at another inflection point because in my soul I knew I sure as hell wasn’t staying there. And that lasted nearly four years — a big chunk of my 30s in limbo, floating, not “landed.” So when I see the looming 3-7 approach, I think, “I’ve wasted so much time!!” But maybe that time wasn’t wasted. I’ve worked on myself; I’ve figured out what’s important to me, what’s not, and I’ve reprioritized. And maybe the concept of feeling “landed” is a little fucking trickster & doesn’t dawn on you until you look back and think, “Oh! Life sure was good back then, huh?”

I’ve thought about teaching abroad in South Korea two (2) times in the past two (2) years, the desire to simply blow it all up itching at the back of my skull. But corporate America intervened on both occasions to force my hand and make me not follow through with it. You see, all this figuring shit out, I feel like that’s supposed to happen earlier in your days of being on Earth.

happiest time in my life

I always think about the Sliding Doors version of my life… If I hadn’t blown it all up & left Los Angeles, would I still be there living in the burning & beautiful City of Angels with all my friends? But if Sliding Doors (the 90s motion picture starring Gwyneth Paltrow using a British accent to much less success than she did in Shakespeare In Love) teaches you anything — a movie I’ve finally seen, after referencing it innumerable times NOT having seen it — it’s that life sucks on both sides of the grass, and it is, in fact, not greener.

Will my move to Chicago (I’m moving to Chicago) be my landing point? Or will the guilt of not using my Masters degree in Secondary Education and my $130,000 in student loans that I plan to never, ever pay back eat away at me until I start applying to teach abroad again? Maybe I’ll find out before I turn 40.