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What do you do when time stops pushing you forward?
For a long time, I filled my schedule with the wrong things. Not because they mattered, but because they kept me busy. Time wasn’t something I lived in. It moved through me, and I barely noticed it was gone.
When my schedule opened up, I didn’t feel free. I felt exposed. So I replaced the noise quickly with new tasks and new challenges, anything that made the hours disappear again.
When I went back to school and realized it didn’t require the amount of time I had prepared to give up, that instinct kicked in immediately. I went looking for a substitute for the space I had just uncovered.
That search turned into these newsletters.
They weren’t a plan or a system. They were simply something that felt like mine. Writing slowed time down and gave the hours shape instead of letting them slip past unnoticed.
Around the same time, I made a quiet decision. I needed more experiences in my life, not the kind you put on a resume, but the kind you remember.
Over the last few years, I’ve taken a lot off my plate. Fewer obligations. Less forced motion. In that space, I started choosing better things for myself.
More availability to be part of my son’s life, more time to unwind, more social connection, and dating.
Every other weekend, I have my son.
Those weekends don’t let time disappear. They require you to be fully there, without shortcuts or multitasking, and they make it impossible to confuse presence with productivity.
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The weekends without him used to feel empty. Now, they feel intentional. Time doesn’t rush the same way anymore. It stays long enough to be felt.
Dating reinforced that shift as well. Sharing interests without turning them into work. Enjoying time without an agenda. Letting moments exist without needing them to lead somewhere.
I met a few women during that time. One of them, without either of us trying, became my best friend. She’s more than that now, but that story belongs in the future.
I used to think filling time was the same as using it. It isn’t.
For years, I lived as a full time student and full time worker, taking work home and wearing myself down by the end of the week while calling it discipline. I would get my son every other week during that time too, doing my best to be present while running on empty. I wasn’t really living in society. I was passing through it.
Now, I’m more deliberate about what fills my time, and because of that, time finally feels like something I’m inside of instead of something rushing past me.
