Time

Sat 13 April 2024 by R.L. Dane

I was chilling out at the parking lot of In-N-Out after having lunch there (because the weather is pretty nice today), but decided to go to a local library to have a nice desk in front of me and do some reading/writing.

I asked the Oracle at Googlii (via sandboxed Gmaps WebView FOSS app) where the nearest library was, and I was amused to find the nearest one is the library at the community college I graduated from (associate's degree) exactly a decade ago (well, in another month).

I think I've been here once or maybe twice since then.

It's so strange to look back 10 years to your late 30s/early 40s (only children and fools give out their precise age on the internet) and realize just how immature you were back then, and just how much life would take a sledgehammer to what you thought life was all about.

Maybe it's an ADHD thing, but I always find myself looking back. To my teens from my 20s, to my 20s from my 30s, and so on.

A song I've liked for a long time talks about this:

Remember the days when life was not so mysterious
Follow me down the hall to the cafeteria
Where the worst thing I could mess up
Was dipping yesterday's corn dog in last week's ketchup
Back in the 8th grade

*chorus*
Why does the past always seem safer?
Maybe because at least we know me made it
And why do we worry about the future?
When every day will come just the way the Lord ordained it
You can believe it, yeah, just like the 8th grade
—Chris Rice, "8th Grade"

Every season of life comes with its own challenges. The things that perturbed me greviously 10 years ago wouldn't even be a footnote to me today.
The things I face today would cause 10-years-ago me to melt into a puddle of anxiety.

"If it be now, 'tis not to come;
if it be not to come, it will be now;
if it be not now, yet it will come:
the readiness is all"
Hamlet, Act V, Scene ii