Recommitting myself to daily writing comes at a cost. Less sleep. It’s Saturday and my plan is to meet friends for a bike ride at 6 am which means I need to leave the house at 5:40. Back out time to drink coffee, wake up, and write and I’m now just up at 4:17. Except that my body seems to know that and so it wakes up at 3:46 for the first time. Left with the choice of chancing falling into a complete coma, I roll over and get out of bed at 3:57.  This better be good. 

In the words of Walker Bobby from Talladega Nights, “YOU BROUGHT THIS ON YOURSELF CHIP!”  In this instance. I am Chip. Get up at the same time often enough and that becomes your time. Good or bad. There you are. 

The alternative is a combo of regret and shoe horning it in later, which, even with plenty of pandemic time, can be difficult. So I take this time and start rattling the cobwebs, hoping for a little nugget of goodness to pop out. 

Yesterday I saw a friend celebrating her 61st birthday. I realized I had known her for 20 years. This made me my brain go to a place it does all the time. It makes me consider the sloughing away of giant chunks of time. Decades. How we all turn around one day and this ride is just over.  You think it’s going to click back up the start of the ride and then welp, sorry folks. You’re dead. 

Harsh realities for a Saturday I know, but if anything it’s really a reminder to live. To slow down and enjoy. To quit worrying about the stupid shit you worry about all the time. You know. Things like politics and taxes and  new stuff and whether Tic Toc is stealing your identity and climate change and how to save the world and on and on. I mean we shouldn’t use all styrofoam but really there’s warehouses of it that someone’s going to use. Unless you’re prepared to figure out how to change world consumption, this may be one you let go. 

It reminds me that we should concentrate on loving ourselves first, our family second, our friends third and everyone else fourth. Everything else likely works itself out. 

It reminds me that we spend a hell of a lot of the time we have here lamenting how we spent that time and that’s a double waste. Once for spending the first time poorly and a second time wasting time regretting it. 

Sometimes I read these musings and they sound like I’m calling for everyone to quit work and just go out and live some free hippy existence. While this would be nice, we’d for sure be inundated with too much Widespread Panic, reggae and Jimmy Buffet music and or people would just be drunk or high all the time. We got a glimpse of that in Pandemic April and we all almost needed to go to rehab. 

What I’m trying to point out is that while yes we have responsibilities to tend too, we all waste an immense amount of time “unliving” and this includes me. We tell ourselves we can’t. We say we will get around to it. We look in the mirror and wish to look different then eat a tube of Thin mints and wonder why we don’t. On and on and on the excuses come for why we can’t. Why that’s just not possible. We base our opinions on “things we read on the internet” and we fret away. Then 2 decades fell away and you didn’t realize it. 

Today all I’m asking you to do is to live a little. Live a little healthier. Get off the couch and start a project you’ve been saying you would. 

Tell your family you love them. Tell your friends the same. Tell a stranger if you’d like. 

Move a little. Dance a little. Do one thing that gives you a slice of happiness. 

Brighten a fucking day instead of dimming it. 

You only have a finite amount of them left. 

I promise I will too. 

#hugsandhi5s