I have a message board from a decade ago which has the fewest objectives listed on it. A daily objective of 7 hours of sleep a day. A weekly objective of reading one book and one tankobon a week. I do not do well with the quantitative objectives I have for my self. I also list habits I need to break. They bend, but they don’t break. I also have three life objectives: 1. Keep objectives simple and practical; 2. Keep perspective with objectives; and 3. Value time over all. I handle the first two fine. The third, which is the one I try to build my life around, I do not handle well.

I really should do better at valuing time. It’s the one commodity I know I am losing out on daily. Money ebbs and flows. Sometimes I have little, sometimes I have a bit more than little, and those sometimes are followed by times when my money goes away. Time, on the other hand, I know I am never gaining more of that, and time keeps slipping through my fingers.

I do a good job of valuing time as far as work life is concerned. I spent 15 of the last 25 years working in town to avoid losing hours of my life commuting. 5-10 minute commutes are gold. The other 10 years, I would get irritated daily about getting stuck in traffic for half hours and hours at a time. I hate to wonder how many years that adds up to. I have tried to avoid overtime, since it feels like failure that I have not achieved the tasks at hand and am being punished by even more time being drawn from me. I have tried to be on point and on task so I can leave when my time is up.

My personal life is another matter. I’ve lost so much time to unnecessary and trivial nonsense. A gym membership, doing low-intensity exercises that I didn’t need to leave home to do. F2P, P2W games that have no endings. Watching review videos on YouTube as though pre-internet I was chasing people for their opinions. Bouncing around a mess of reddit posts that leave me shrugging my shoulders. Going through yet more seasons of isekai/tensei anime like the plots would ever deviate. Going to the bookstore to buy books that I fear I will be too lazy to ever read. I just keep stumbling into ways to waste my time.

I find myself looking back at all the time I have lost to my own foolishness and being overwhelmed by impotence. It is not as though there are corrective action plans to recoup the lost time; the time is long gone. Do I dwell on this failing just to add to the lost time? Do I say “never again’ only to see again come several times more? Do I try not to dwell on this failing and pretend the time hasn’t gone? I can’t chase what is already vanished. It’s not like time will come back to me and be like, “yeah, son, you want another shot at me?”

Soundtrack for the day on Spotify, 08032024:

1. One – U2
2. (There’s Gonna Be A) Showdown – Archie Bell & The Drells
3. Sell Out – Reel Big Fish
4. Love Makes A Woman – Barbara Acklin
5. Doing It All For My Baby – Huey Lewis & The News
6. Wizard Of Finance – Parliament
7. Untitled (How Does It Feel) D’Angelo
8. ブーツを鳴らして – SHISHAMO
9. Doll Parts – Hole
10. グラデーション- Super Beaver
11. I Wanna Be Your Dog – The Stooges
12. Halftime – Nas
13. Who Got Da Props – Black Moon
14. Modus Operandi – Photek
15. Mood Indigo – Charles Mingus
16. Rainy Day Women #12 & 35
17. Mannish Boy – Muddy Waters
18. Duke of Hazzard – Blockhead
19. When Doves Cry – Prince
20. Head Like A Hole – Nine Inch Nails