Tuesday, September 18, 2012

This Essay took me Precisely 30 Minutes to Write


The need to set every task that occurs within the course of the day to an equal amount of minutes is a habit that has haunted me all my life. I need exactly five minutes more of sleep, ten minutes to get ready, and twelve minutes to get from point A to point B. Anything more is unnecessary, and anything less is insufficient. There’s just something about time being divided perfectly, and equally into small sections of my life. Every memory, every event is written down in the record of my life, with a beautiful round number of minutes sitting right next to it. No extra seconds spill, so carelessly, over the edge. 
The problem with cutting with such straight lines is, you hardly leave yourself any room to breathe. Sometimes, organization can be suffocating. Maybe I need to loosen the bands around my wrist and stretch those uptight muscles. Maybe I ought to tell myself things like, “Today, I will be happy.” Today I won’t complain. I will change, not for 24 hours, or 1,440 minutes, but maybe for the rest of my life. But just for today, I will forget the time, and let everything flow as it wishes, until its own natural limitation slowly melts away the adventure. I will eat when I am hungry. I will sleep when I am tired. And in between the gaps I will find myself doing things as they come to me. But just for today, can I be this way. Then, I can go back to boxing my life into minutes, perfectly round, perfectly even, boxes of minutes. 

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