Have you noticed that the older we get, the faster time seems to fly by? Maybe it's because we increasingly have more commitments as we get older. It's not just about friends and family anymore, but also about new friends, significant others, and work, just to name a few. Before, when I got older, I felt I had earned my age. Lately, just when I'm getting used to being a year older, it seems like its time for another birthday again. I just got used to the idea of being 25 - and now I'm going to be 26 in two weeks!?!
School's winding down a bit this year but I'm still never home. It's like everytime something frees up in my schedule, something else takes its place. Classes have died down a bit, but I'm also auditing two extra classes, spending more time with friends I've neglected over the past two years, doing volunteer stuff at the law school (I'm doing my first trial next week!), and hitting the gym to counteract all the baked goodies I've been making. And of course, there is school itself.
I sometimes feel like when law school started, I stepped on this treadmill that automatically ups it speed every year. Every time I think things have reached their limit, I seem to find the limit line has moved further. Honestly, I can't even remember the last time I woke up not feeling tired. When I went over to my uncle/aunt's house for (Canadian) Thanksgiving, they were like, what happened to you? Are you okay? (I had lost some weight over the last 4 weeks of my 6 week secondment at the govt job because I was so stressed out I couldn't keep anything down.......)
Not that things have always been bad busy. I can now run farther than I ever could before in my life (I'm up to 8.5k & aiming for 10), feel like I have made a bit of a difference in the past 2 years in law school - which was why I went to law school in the first place, and know the city way better than I did 2 years ago. But I was talking to one of my friends about it, about how I was starting to worry that at the rate I was going, one day, I'd wake up, and realize all of a sudden that I was 40. But she said, at least you can look back on you life & say that you lived it to its fullest. Which IS true, but there's a lot to be said about just taking an afternoon off to take a walk in a part, or curl up with a good book. I can't even remember the last time I just sat back and did.......nothing.
I guess the problem is though, that now a lot of my friends or people I know are in law. And law people are INSANE. I know people who literally don't sleep because they're running from one activity to another. So when I look at my schedule, it doesn't really seem so bad when there are so many other over-achievers doing tons more than I am. My law friends understand when I need to cancel or can't come to something because school commitments are starting to freak me out. The difficulty I guess, is when I try to explain this to my non-law friends.
One of my colleagues & I once had this ranting session on how she had been criticized for her 'lack of time management'. Well, the thing really wasn't her poor planning skills, but the fact that so much of our lives is out of our control. You might want to go do dinner tonight, but if a lawyer calls you at 11:30AM and tells you that they have a memo due at 9am the next day (which did happen to me this summer), all your bestlaid plans going flying out the window. And yes, this incident happened at a firm but I also worked my first weekend during the government stint of my summer. At least our taxpayers' dollars are being put to good use there.....
Some of my friends & I recently did this 'reverse' quiz where instead of writing things about yourself, you try to fill out stuff about the other person. Well, there was this section of the quiz that asked them how they would describe me. And out of all the wonderful adjectives in the world, one of my friends (who's known me for a really long time) called me 'driven'! Which was ironic because to me, I'm like the laziest person out of many of the people I know. Especially when I start comparing myself to my classmates.
Maybe it's because many of my friends still live at home. Although I love living downtown, the problem with living on your own is that you have to do everything yourself. When I'm busy, I still need to do my laundry/cook/go grocery shopping 'cause there sure as hell ain't anyone else that's going to do it for me. And when your schedule's already jam packed with things, that's just another thing that you have to somehow find time for.....hence the lack of sleep lately.
But back to my original train of thought - do you think that's how the rest of our lives will be? Just the progression of, or rushing from, one activity to another? I mean, the commitments and responsibilities are only going to increase from hereon out. There will (hopefully!) be spouses, kids, mortgages, dogs, elderly parents, and increasing job responsibilities to consider. How do you make time for all that when you're barely having enough time as is AND you don't even have any of those boxes checked yet?
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