The compulsion to add myself to yet another email list has effectively startled me back into an odd sense of time realism. All I had to do was read the first sentence of a book recommendation for 4000 Weeks by Oliver Burkeman and my brain accelerated into hyper-drive.

An average lifespan of a human is 4000 weeks.

Tick tock, my friends. Tick tock.

My human impulse is to insist, that’s not enough! I can’t possibly read 4000 books within that time span. Why part of that time I either could not have read or was forced to sleep and go to school. What do you mean that once a week rehearsal for a choir for a few months could not simply feed my drive? Am I truly that hungry for more studying? Where do you find the balance of needing a solid week to the self when there is the contrasting desire to escape into a month’s journey into the world.

There are too many boxes to tick. Too many bad jokes to clock.

It’s not enough. To me, it will probably never be enough.

Four thousand weeks. Ponder that over a slice of cake, won’t you? What, in life, do you think is worth doing for literal weeks on end?

Oh, I have so many questions that I could send myself into a midnight tizzy. Yet I think that is the magic in such an accessible book title. It’s pithy, visual and sets up a timer. And my god do timers make me scrabble wildly.

In middle school, I had a bit part in a Disney medley as the White Rabbit. It was a perfect encapsulation of time blindness. “I’m late, I’m late!” Run to the door, sloppy sandwich in hand, balancing a spilling coffee while digging into a bag for my keys. My alarm is ringing on time, while the car clock is six minutes ahead, my mind stuck in the thought I had ten minutes earlier. Time is a confusing sphinx that I simply cannot tame.

Ah, but if I simply let go of the “musts” and “have to’s”, the “shoulds” and the dreaded oughts, then things seem to even out. The nature of sleep schedules will correct themselves due to the body’s clock, getting me up at the right time. Intuition and preparation come together in a beautiful moment of confidence.

In returning to a natural order outside of digitized calendars and outsourced minds, I can actually declutter my own chaos. No, I do not need the outside help nor a new organization from Mari Kondo or Clutterbug, though they are wonderful resources.

I am now at the point of just appreciating the joy of doing. Managing my time simply means I have to learn to manage my expectations for myself. There will be things I can do and things I can’t. On the days I feel off, there is always a few options to find a meaningful center. May it be productive, social or just a moment to stare at trees and rocks, I find that the point of it all is to fight to the point to simply exist. Manage those sensory inputs, enact some of that grand overall plan of self-acceptance.

If we simply have 4000 weeks to spend with ourselves, wouldn’t we want to be able to actually enjoy the experience?

I know there are several things I’d want to accomplish before that time was up. How about you?