My Biggest Fear—Time (Or A Lack Thereof); A Reflection

Alternative title: In Which I Publicly Announce My Semi-Laziness 

I wake up with a start, sitting almost immediately. My head hurts from the speed and things only get worse from here. The first thought that rushes into my mind is the question ‘What’s the time?’ and when I look at the clock on my bedside table I see the numbers ‘17:47’ blink at me. 

Panic.

The curtains flutter from my movement to reveal a darkness outside. The clock wasn’t lying. My bed engulfs me once more as I try to rationalise my situation. 

I wake up again, heart pounding and head hazy with confusion—what just happened? Had I fallen asleep again? It must be past midnight! I look at the clock, ‘11:37’. My heart stutters in relief. Thank goodness, I think, it’s not too late. And with that I let myself settle back into my blankets.

Minutes later I’m up and drinking a steaming cup of tea, the dream clinging to me like a bad smell, and various thoughts rushing round in my mind like turbulent winds. 

As this may illustrate, recently my biggest fear has been waking up late and, by extension, missing out on life and the things I want to spend my time doing. I set half a dozen alarms every night just so I don’t accidentally sleep in. 

I’m terrified of losing time. 

Despite this, I still find myself procrastinating my time away. I can spend hours on the internet, watching television (or YouTube) or catnapping. I always mean to do something, I’ve got the To-Do lists to prove it, but I hardly ever follow through.

This worries me.

Part of being an adult, I’ve found, (and further being independent) is forcing yourself to do the things your parents used to force you to do—you essentially need to learn to parent yourself. That means making yourself do all the things you need to (but perhaps don’t want to, or aren’t motivated to) do because, the truth is, you will never merely ‘feel’ like it.

Whilst writing differs slightly from this, it still takes effort to push through and get from thought to action. You may want to write but not have the move, the motive, to go through with it. And that’s a problem.

Especially, if you, like me, would eventually like to publish a novel.

Novels don’t write themselves (unfortunately, though where would the fun be in that?).

The thing is, I don’t know how to force myself to do things I don’t want to do. When I try to, my success is varied and it’s never because of one specific thing. It’s all very experimental which is tough to come to terms with. 

Then again, I think it’s a fact of life that sometimes you won’t be able to force yourself do something no matter how hard you try. But that’s the main thing there—you need to keep trying! 

How do you get things done? 

Janna

Photo by the fantastic Ales Krivec.