I'M NOT HERE TO WASTE TIME

TO BE CLEAR... HERE means Earth.

Not this blog. Not a job. Earth. The whole ride.

I don't know how long I've got. Neither do you.

The Arithmetic Nobody Does

Pick the number you figure you'll make it to. Subtract where you are now. Multiply by 365.

That's the budget. That's all of it.

It's a smaller number than you expected. It is always a smaller number than you expected.

Now go open your screen time.

I'll wait.

Build Things That Finish

Here's where I'm supposed to tell you to delete your apps and go touch grass. Blah Blah Blah, not gonna. You won't, and I'd be a hypocrite typing this into a glowing rectangle .

Waste it if you want, everyone who does regrets it in the end when asked. Look, here's number one and two they say on their deathbed:

Living for others: Not having the courage to follow one's own dreams and instead living up to the expectations of family, peers, or society.
Working too hard: Spending too much of life on the "treadmill" of work and missing out on children's youth and partner companionship.

Get it?

We Had Big Plans

Alright. Real part.

I lost my cousin Tanner, I have no siblings. This is as close as it got for me. I've written about it here before, and I wrote a whole screenplay about it, mostly because I promised I would.

There's a line in the closing notes of that draft I keep circling back to:

We had big plans. They got stopped.

That's the thing. People die, that's the deal, nobody gets out clean. It's that there was a list. A whole list of stuff we were going to do. The list didn't get finished and now it never will.

So when I say I'm not here to waste time, I don't mean I've optimized my morning. I don't have a system. I don't want your system.

I mean there's a list, I know roughly what's on it, and I've watched up close what happens when the clock runs out before the list does.

I think about Van Gogh sometimes. Died broke. Died convinced it hadn't worked. Got everything right in the end, except the part where he was alive for it.

Final Thought

I'm not telling you to be productive. Productivity is engagement with a nicer font.

Waste time on purpose. Blow a whole Saturday on something stupid with people you love. That isn't waste. That's the point. That's what the time was FOR.

What I'm saying is know the difference between time you spent and time that got taken.

One of those you chose.

Tick tick tick, clock's running - GOBLIN