A Meditation on Time

I was pretty young when I started thinking about time. I immediately loved the time travel fiction, because I thought about how I would meet my maternal grandmother if I had a time machine. If you are reading Without a Tether, you probably know that already.

I started writing the first version of that story almost twenty years ago. I was going to write it as a novel. It would allow me the time that reality would not. I’d spend time getting to know her as best I could. The character of me would, but also the writer me, as I did research would get to know her. I probably wrote 20 pages before not knowing where to go with it. Then, about seven years ago, I started again. That’s what I’ve been publishing, although I have been going through and adding and editing, and revising.

I’m obsessed with time, and over the course of the last year, I think that it has been really hurting me. I’ve been having major mental health issues, and I’m working through them. One of the major factors, is anxiety attacks, and it is at least fifty percent about time. 

I will use an example that probably sounds ridiculous to many. If it’s five in the afternoon, and I don’t know what we’re doing for dinner, I get stressed. Not because I’m hungry, but because I know that if we eat late, we’ll be up late. And if we’re up late, I will either sleep late and miss time in the next day; or I will get up early and be exhausted and less effective. It will waste a day.

This plays out in small ways like this, but also big ways. I stress about going home for the holidays. I don’t want to go, I don’t like Massachusetts or the weather. I end up staying at a different place from my wife and son due to pet allergies. But if I miss the holidays, and someone in my family dies, I will not have had time with them. This one probably sounds more normal, except for the level of turmoil that it creates within me.

I have been going to the gym three times a week for the last two years. In the last six weeks, I have gone twice, maybe. I like the gym, but between getting ready, and going, it’s a three hour commitment. And I’ve been so plugged in with my writing, I don’t want anything to interrupt that. So I let the gym slip. I can’t let time with my son or my wife slip. And I have to write when I can. What else could I do?

On the day that I am writing this, I went to the doctor two days ago. I wanted to go get prescribed anxiety medication, and my therapist was on board. While I was there, they did some of the routine check up things they do for everyone. However, I am a forty year old obese man. My weight was at an all time high, and my blood pressure was high enough that my physician prescribed me medication. 

I have to make some changes, in order to buy myself more time. But I’m also overwhelmingly aware that it will take much of the time that it will afford me. I am hoping that between the blood pressure medicine, and the anxiety medicine, I will have some relief. Relief from the constant ticking that seems to be surrounding me. Relief from the stress of trying to balance everything. 

I need relief so that I can appreciate the time. I am aware that right now, I’m not appreciating the time, because I’m so stressed about wasting it.