*At the time of purchase I was unaware that this coat was real fur. Had I had known, I would not have purchased it.
At dinner the other night, I jokingly told my companion that I wished I had 2 extra hours each day but only for me and a very small select group of people, so that I could get 8,3% more done than the rest of the population (provided, I were to actually be productive for the whole day). I told him I would also settle for cutting myself in two to get double the amount of work done.
Joking aside, the sentiment is still there – there never seem to be enough goddamned hours in the day to do all the things I want to do and see all the places I want to see.
There is all the work I want to be creating, for LFB and for my photography business, all the art I want to be making, all the books and magazines I want to read – I have a stack of New Yorker Magazines that take up two whole shelves in my bookcase that have never been opened – all the places I want to travel to, all the galleries and museums I want to visit, all the songs I want to write, all the things I want to learn, all the new hobbies I want to start, and there are my dreams of starting my documentary and search about/for my birth mother in South Korea as well as my dream of going off the grid to travel both southern Asia and drive across the US in a camper.
And then there are still those grand dreams of falling in love, building a home, growing a life.
At 28, I feel the years ticking by, a not so silent ever persisting faint rhythmic tick tick, tick-tick-tick ringing in my ears, located somewhere in the back of my head, reminding myself that I will be approaching my last fuckable day sooner than I would like, thinking that life somehow starts at 28 and ends at 30 and how it’s cruel and more than just a little bit unfair. And then I try to remind myself that 40 is the new 30 and 30 is the new 20 so I basically get 20 years for free, and fuck those stupid sexist double standards anyway. But can I really still wear ripped tights and dye my hair blue when i’m 45? (Not sure, but I will probably be doing so anyway…)
In addition to feeling the weight of time on my shoulders and the pressure of founding a business (I know I have only just begun, but now long can you “found” something before it’s actually a failure?), I also question the way the social media world has become full of aspirational content, always tugging at my sleeve, whispering in my ear, reminding me that other people are out there going places and doing things, and I’m sitting here typing up this post from behind a computer screen in my bathrobe.
And yet although I am somehow fully aware that we only show the world the best plays of our lives mirroring the technics used by movie trailer makers, I am still yearning to be that adventuring soul facing this brave new world all on her own even though, when I sit back and look at my life, I’m doing just that. (I have a funny feeling that if we were all to look at our lives through our social media channels were we not to be ourselves, we would be envious of ourselves as well. And ain’t that the rub?)
There were times in my life when I was unhappy and felt as if time were this horribly infinite thing that had no end, but these days I feel as if it’s like sand in my hand, and the harder a try to hold onto it, the faster it slips from my fingers. I think my workaholism comes from a need to make sure I don’t waste a second of the life that has been given to me, because time is so short, and we only get a very small portion to do with it what we want.
I don’t fear death like I used to as a scared little child counting down the dreaded days until my parents were no longer with me or the approximate year I were to leave this earth, but I fear wasting time. I fear breathing but not living. I want to make every second count and not waste any minute of it.
Life can’t be a three-ring circus all the time, but I want my eyes to discover something new every day and I want my heart to fill with happiness when I wake up and my soul to feel content when I bury myself under the covers. I want more drunken nights, more lazy sundays, more adventure more exploration, I want to do everything with 100% excitement and ambition.
It’s not what you do but how you do it but still there’s a hell of a lot of
what
i
want
to
do.
Can’t we just freeze time and stay here for a while?
Photography: Joel
Editing: Rae Tashman
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