TIME IS A MYSTERY - A LITTLE ESSAY ON LIFE AND OUR TIME.
The other day I was writing on Instagram how precious, fast, incredibly rapid, valuable and important time is. It is very cliché but it is so true! I posted this photo of a 9-month old baby Vivian on my Instagram with both of us smiling and I did a little bit of reminiscing of my early years as a new mom that first year ,which felt both the longest and also the shortest year of my years as a mother, so far. Honestly, sometimes it feels like ages ago when Vivian was that little, that young - a baby. But other times, I should say most times that period feels like it was just yesterday. I blinked and Vivian grew: from a newborn, to a baby, a young toddler, an older toddler and now a young little girl who is in first grade. Time has grown with both of us - the mother and the daughter, the woman and the little girl. The mother has gotten more wrinkles and most likely uglier, but the daughter has gotten to be a first-grader and most definitely a lot more gorgeous! At the end of the day, time has moved but every now and then we SHOULD let time stand still and beautifully remember it through magical, happy pictures like the ones we post of our kids when they were babies... After all my daughter will always be my ♥️ baby
TIME - it is a concept that to me in more and more ways than one is a mystery and not just any mystery but THE BIGGEST MYSTERY. I have been thinking about that a lot lately, as November gets cut in half and we are just 45 days away from Christmas. Which means we are only 52 days away from December 31st - the very last day of this year 2019. This year A LOT - as every year - has gone by super fast. Unlike the previous couple of years I feel like this year was not as exciting and kind of blah, if I am being honest. Nothing too major happened, but yet some milestones did happen for me. I became an aunt. We got not one but two brand-new babies join our family. All of that is part of time. Babies being born, children growing, little feet and little hands getting bigger and stronger, little bodies getting taller, little minds getting brighter, smarter, more curious. That little girl that is being raised in my home and in my heart grows bigger and a little smarter each day, asking more and more questions, wanting to know everything, learning and teaching herself daily. It is all images in time, small and big milestones. Vivian brought home her school pictures the other day and the proud mama that I am, I had to look and "brag" about them right away. But I could not stop looking at (and comparing) the changes between her school photo portraits from last year to the ones from this year. The kid has grown. The kid has gone through times. And honestly it is just the beginning. Imagine how many milestones will pass through Vivian's life, not just during her childhood, but during her adolescence, her adulthood, her middle life, her elderly years. But I love seeing her features develop more each year and noticing changes in her face (though minor) that show that she is getting a little bigger, a little older, she is growing. Because time grows...
Time is a mystery and we are its passengers, its clients. Just like any customers or clients, sometimes we are happy and sometimes we are not. But the customer is not always right, not when it comes to time. Make no mistakes, you will make mistakes. Just because you live and you learn, it doesn't mean you will not make mistakes. Time and time again you will make mistakes whether you mean to or not. Time and again you will be guilty or feel guilty about something. Speaking of time - and you can look at this as a mistake - you will waste time, for no reason at all. You will waste time doing nothing, spend countless hours online, watch hours of silly Instagram stories that at the end of the day do not matter, binge-watch entire episodes, seasons and series on Netflix, you will waste time with stupid and very shallow reality shows. You will waste time doing other things while you can be doing something with your partner or spending time with your children or doing something nice for yourself -- like giving yourself a face mask, a massage, a fancy dinner complete with wine, etc, etc. But let time do its thing nevertheless and don't be hard on yourself even if you waste it with useless things. As long as at the end of the day you make time to go to bed feeling at peace with yourself, feeling like it was a day worth living and feeling like time was on your side.
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Because we will also "waste" a lot of our time at work, often doing things we don't like or we rather not do, because let's face it - even the ones that are 100% in love with their jobs, have to do things at work that we dislike, hate or prefer not to do if we had the choice. We all do things we don't love or like, things we rather not do but life "obligates" us to. As long as you make your days worth it and think of that 24 hours as a chain of minutes where time moves, some hours slowly and some hours fast! Some days feel like a week long and some days feel like two hours worth of time. Some nights go by as soon as you close your eyes and open them again. Some nights you feel like you got the longest, best sleep of your life, 12 hours long! Some times you smile widely and people get captured by your smile and other times despair and sadness has filled your face and whether you try to hide it, others still see it. But simply live, because time will go and the worst will pass. Challenges, difficulties, paths, muddy puddles, thunder storms, snow storms, hurricanes, earthquakes and mountains are for you to climb, pass, jump, overcome and succeed!
Time is a mystery, I honestly don't know how and when it goes so damn fast. Let's think about 2019 in terms of my blogging for example. It has been the busiest year yet for me as far as this little corner of the web goes and I feel like I have constantly talked about it here on the blog and "made excuses". But I put the word EXCUSES in quotation marks because honestly I have had a busy year working, being a full-time mom and just spending time at home, relaxing, taking care of myself and my darling mini me. A lot of times too I have chosen to spend my free time watching movies or shows, reading or doing other mindless things as opposed to blogging or Instagramming. I have only managed 10 to 15 posts a month on the blog, which means I have done it sort of part-time, and even that has been a challenge often, if I am not lying. The last few weeks I have not been very active on My Instagram either (please follow me there if you don't), let alone Facebook which I use less and less often these days. The last week I only posted two posts on my Instagram feed where I normally post 4 to 7 posts on my Instagram. I find it a lot quicker and easier to do as a post there which will take max 15 minutes to edit, write, use the right hashtags and post, as opposed to blog posts which I think take minimally an hour and a half. At the end of the day, it all comes to time - a lot of times we can not afford to spend time even with the things we love and our dearest hobbies - like our blog.
Time is a mystery and this week I was even reminded more of this since we totally were in purging and organizing mood when it comes to our basement. There, in many boxes time was resting. Besides clothing, toys, house items, some furniture and other things we had packed away to give away or donate - things we do not need, do not use, do not wear or do not fit anymore, things that have gotten older, very used or that we simply do not need at all, there were entire boxes of things that reminded us from times of the past. CDs, discs, DVDs, a ton of pictures (some with people that are not even in our lives anymore), entire albums, old books, school books, old diplomas, homework, college papers, school memorabilia, applications, envelopes, junk mail, old cellphones, old electronics that do not even exist anymore, even floppy discs. Baby shoes, baby boxes, strollers, walkers, even a box of unopened diapers, when did Viv even get that big?! And photos, entire drawers of photos, back from the days of non-digital cameras that used film or reusable picture cameras with the black sheer rolls of film that you needed to develop, lots of rolls of photo-cameras too. Beautiful photos of the early days when my husband was just my boyfriend, photos of our happier times and our beautiful weeding weekend. And to think of all of those times, some of which even bring tears to my eyes if I am being entirely, brutally honest. Many happy and joyful moments captured in pictures, but also many bittersweet moments stuck in time, all there in photographs. Just seeing at my wedding pictures alone and him and I are not even together anymore, for a few years now (but that is entirely another different story and post)... But my point is there is so much! So much and I am sure I am not alone and that you all can relate. A house can accumulate so much through the years, especially inside drawers, in basements, garages and attics.
Yes, all this stuff, all of these memories, the hundreds and thousands of pictures are all part of time, things we have accumulated through the years, in time. Things that remind us of past times, mostly happy and good times but even sad and difficult times. Items which at some point in time meant something to us. Clothing we used to wear and some if not most of those clothes remind us of when we were smaller and thinner. Beauty and makeup products that remind us of when we needed less stuff to keep our faces fresh and when we had less wrinkles, less gray hair, most likely less problems. It all comes down to time, time buried inside items, things, stuff, pictures, old cell-phones, floppy discs, USBs, desktops, junk! Yes junk. Because that's what it is now. Minutes, hours, weeks, years of time inside dusty boxes, old drawers, wood crates, old pieces of furniture... and now packed in cartons, ready to be thrown away, burned, destroyed, donated... and turned into junk! Would you believe it if I told you that I filled over 40 carton boxes of clothing and home stuff alone that I called Purple Heart to schedule a pickup for?! That doesn't even include all the papers, photos and memorabilia that I mentioned. Over 40 boxes of time in them. Boxes filled with time! Yes time is inside these boxes: worn, written, watched, read, thought, spent, sung, listened to, rested, hugged, laid, flipped through, dusted, forgotten...
Honestly I can write another 10 or more paragraphs on the 'topic of time' but this already got very long and I don't want to bore you. If you made time to read this (see what I did there?!) many props to you and thank you for reading. As time is ticking this morning and I have to get going, especially since the roads are bad due to our first big snowfall of the season, I am going to sign off and go on live my time this Monday morning, wishing you all a very happy Monday and a Fantastic New Week too. I hope you enjoyed this little essay or prose today. Happy Veterans Day also!!
