This year especially, as we’ve transitioned the kids to learning from home (and in combination with changes to my work-from-home business), I’ve noticed this sense of “never-enoughness” with my time:

I didn’t spend enough conscious time with the kids.

I didn’t have enough time for myself.

I didn’t get enough time for the work I wanted to do.

And when will I make enough time for my partner?

Spend enough. Have enough. Get enough. Make enough.

Is this all about scarcity of time? Is this all about how time becomes currency? And, is it possible to reframe my experience of time?

Instead of embracing LIFE, I make sure I don’t enjoy things “too much,” just in case I have to quickly prepare for losing everything and enveloping myself inside grief.

And god, it’s exhausting.

I understand (intellectually) that it’s not about “losing” so much as “cycling through” what naturally comes from LIFE: change, transition, then death. I understand (intellectually) that we cannot have life without these things.

I just didn’t realize how desperately afraid of death (and life) I’ve become.

And who would have thought that I’d travel 200 miles to realize all this? To realize, too, that I have everything I want and need within the life I’m already living.