Today.

Well, here I am at fifty three. Fifty three. Man, that just doesn’t sound right. How does time get by us so fast? I don’t mean to lament on the obvious, but really, how did I get this old without achieving all those goals I had at twenty one? Time waits for no one. I know this. I work at a nursing home. I see evidence of it every day. I’ve learned that old people are just people like you and I. They’re pretty bewildered at where they’ve ended up, too. They have desires, demands, and dreams just like the rest of us. We all have the same dilemma: a finite amount of time.

Time is the great leveler. Pay attention to this, my younger friends. None of us have the same amount. As a matter of fact, none of us knows exactly how much time we actually do have. Sounds elementary, my dear Watson. It is. Yet we go through our days and nights with little, or no, thought on the things we want to accomplish, other than the occasional daydream or “I wish…” . Time is fleeting. Time is also relative. Four years seems to be a lifetime when an eighteen year old looks at their educational requirements. It is but the blink of an eye in the retrospective vision of a fifty three year old examining his life. Today. Today is reality. Today is the only time that truly exists. It took me so long to learn this. It took me even longer to act upon it. Evidence of that is in the words you read today.

I started blogging last night. I set up my WordPress account (the freebie, of course) and began to chronicle family stuff. I’ve always desired to write about family history, and to have a venue to post family information, events and history. I’ve also always been lazy about doing it. Just as I’ve been very lazy about writing anything else, in general. Sloth is not one of the seven deadly sins for no reason. Sloth comes in many forms. They all kill. Procrastination breeds regret. Regret breeds remorse. Remorse suffocates you in a depressive pillow, slowly  sucking the life from your soul. Overly dramatic? Maybe. Maybe not.

Regret is not generally my thing. I’ve made plenty of mistakes, plenty of bad decisions that are mine to own. I am of the mind that who we are in life is a result of our decisions, be they good or bad. The good ones we tend to take credit for, to celebrate. The bad ones we have a tendency to want to forget. The problem with that is that if we forget them, sweep them under the rug to be forgotten, we don’t learn from them. We regret them. Regret, in and of itself, teaches us nothing. Don’t let your bad decisions scare you away from letting them teach you something about yourself. If you screw up, learn from it. At least make different mistakes, and don’t keep making the same ones over and over. That’s why you should always remember your bad decisions. Not for regret’s sake, but to make yourself a better person.   I find myself looking back upon my life today with only one true regret. I’ve mourned it, lamented it, and my soul has dimmed somewhat because of it. All of my life I’ve dreamed of being a writer. I’ve started writing everything from novels to short stories, nearly all unfinished, especially the novels. All those words give me the feeling that, I suppose, of an aborted child that never had life. I look back and see the evidence of my sloth, the debris of my creative life, and the wonder seeps in. I wonder: what would my life be like if I’d just write? Would I be any good at it? Would I be able to put into print what my imagination sees? Would I be able to touch anyone with those words? Procrastination. Regret. Remorse. Suffocation of my soul.

No. No more. I won’t allow myself to regret the past thirty or forty years of procrastination, of being a sloth of a man. I’ll act. Win, lose or draw. Follow my progress here, I dare you. Keep me grounded, dear reader. That’s why I began this blog, in all reality. I see the end game in sight. Fifty three isn’t middle age, unless I’m going to live until I’m one hundred and six years old. I sincerely don’t want to live that long. I have no death wish, by any means, but I’ve seen how most one hundred year old people live, and it’s no party I want to attend. I am using this blog to chronicle my family, yes. It’s the act of writing. A novel is my goal, my dream. This blog is the first step. A building block in the foundation of a dream. It’s important to me that I not be slothful any longer, and that I find out if my dream can become a reality. Today. Because there really isn’t anything but today.

K. S.