Auld Lang Syne
The past few days of my life have been some of the busiest consecutive days of my life thus far. I am absolutely drained. I’ve tried to write my year in review blog post about six times, and haven’t gotten farther than February on any of the attempts. Now I’m trying this. Rather than trying to recall details from the past year, I’ll try to envision what I want the next year of my life to look like, and figure out what I need to do to make it look that way. Some people may call this “making resolutions.” But do not be fooled with the generic nature of the title. This resolution exploration will hopefully be much deeper than the resolution I’ve been telling people about when asked: be able to do the splits by January 1st, 2020.
For me, 2018 was a year of growth, change, and uncertainty. With that, 2018 was a year of learning. Despite how scary it was, I decided to take a step off the well known and traveled path that people my age are expected to take, and wandered into uncharted territory. I took blind turns. And I made a few decisions that in retrospect maybe weren’t the best, but I did learn from each and every one.
Perhaps the most important thing I learned this whole year was something I learned today. (Or, put together today, rather. It’s been a work in progress.)
july 4th, 2018, the day I decided to leave SCAD
Independence
I have watched so many of my friends become independent this year, and I’ve admired them and been awestruck by it. Independence is something that comes with later curfews, with drivers licenses, with an eighteenth birthday, and with moving into a dorm during your freshman year of college. But none of that compares to the colder, harder form of independence that is solid independence.
Me in March, thinking I’m independent simply because I can drive
I’m not saying that it didn’t feel great to finally get to drive myself to high school. It was a very liberating feeling when I was sixteen, getting to decide when I got to leave for the place that I would be stuck for the next eight hours being told what to do and how to do it by people whose permission was required to use the restroom, so long as we were there no later than 8:14am. Funny when it’s put that way, isn’t it!
That’s what I’m saying though- teenage independence is a safe, warm, fuzzy kind of independence that is… malleable, for lack of a better word. But 20 year old independence is more complex. It’s solid. It isn’t as forgiving. It’s self discipline. It’s responsibility. It’s knowing that if you don’t tell yourself to do it, no one else will. It’s paying bills on time. It’s going to work. It’s studying for your exams. It’s getting groceries at the end of the day even though you really want nothing more than to just go home and veg out, even if it’s just for ten minutes, because god my feet are sore and I’ve been working all day and I haven’t even had time to eat anything substantial yet today and I still have all this homework to do and I have to get to the bank to deposit this check and I’m almost out of gas…
It’s balancing all of (what David Foster Wallace would call) life’s “banalities” with the things that are truly important. The things that not only bring you joy, but also just keep you sane. It seems easy enough, but the older I get, the more I seem to struggle with it- this complicated thing called balance.
The Value of Different Currencies
Self Portrait, September 2018. Sigma 35mm Art Lens.
The past 7 months have been money-centric. I have been working more than I ever have before. Usually my work weeks are between 40 and 50 hours. At one point a couple months ago, I was feeling so overwhelmed with work that I decided to do some math to find out what fraction of the time I actually had to enjoy my time as I pleased. I was underwhelmed with the numbers: out of the 168 hours in a week, I still had at LEAST 118 hours a week that I was not working. Minus 8 hours of sleep per night, and I still have 62 free hours a week. Subtract time for commuting, personal hygiene, meals, and etcetera, and I still have about 40 hours to spare… I could be working an additional full-time job with the spare time I had every week. But I didn’t. Somehow, this time managed to slip away from me between the trips into the social media abyss, going into a partial coma in the fleeting time between work and class (or between work and work again), and just sitting and thinking about all of the stuff I had to do, so overwhelmed that I was unable to even start.
I have justified this mentally unhealthy style of living by the numbers in my bank account and by the fun new expensive toys I’ve bought (but not had much of a chance to use). Like my 35mm Sigma lens that I bought in September. What have I used it for besides things that will make money? My point is that I am placing too much value on the dollar and not enough value on the hour. The whole year, I have been sacrificing the priceless currency of time for a currency that is so bittersweet.
What I realized today, as a result of the past six days of nothing but work, (seriously, no time to even sit down kind of work) as well as Sahara Rose’s most recent podcast, is that my time is worth more than I am trading it for.
This is a tricky statement. I don’t know that it’s even possible to create an equation to determine what the dollar value of what a person’s given amount of time is worth. But I do know that my time is worth so much more than I’ve been getting for it. Maybe I’m not even talking about the dollar value of my time here. Maybe I should focus more on the personal value. Perhaps that is why I’ve been so unhappy during the weeks that I work crazy hours and come home with four figure instead of three figure paychecks.
This adds value to my life. August 2018.
I need to spend my time doing things that bring personal value into my life. Thing that bring me joy and excitement. Things that help me to break out of the trap that so many young adults fall into. The one that draws you in with big numbers as it sucks the life out of you. The one that you can never escape from because as life goes on, the numbers keep getting bigger and bigger.
At a certain point, people who are out of balance in life have so much money that they don’t even know what to do with it, and they’re still not happy because they’re lacking in the other form of currency. What’s the point of making all of this money if I have no time to do what I want with it?
Now, obviously, I’m 20 years old, not 71 and retired. So this isn’t the case. I am lacking both time and money, but for the past year (and seven months in particular) I have placed far more value on one of these currencies. I am drained. Something has to change.
In 2019, I resolve to recognize the value of my time. I resolve to see my time as a priceless currency and to treat it as one. I resolve to use my time doing things that fill me up rather than drain me. I resolve to stop wasting my time.
And I resolve to do be able to do the splits by 2020.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxo sending all my love!!! happy new year. pm