I'm not looking back  
But I want to look around me now  
See more of the people  
And the places that surround me now

-- Neil Peart, Time Stand Still

A few hours in the company of a lovely woman seems like an instant, but a few hours at work an eternity. There is some - most likely apocryphal - quote attributed to Einstein about that being the definition of relativity. All I know is that it’s true, based on empirical evidence I’ve been collecting of late.

Time moving on seems to be the one constant in my life these days. Some days it’s hard to muster the will to face the seconds, the minutes, the hours. Face them or not, they tick on, dribble through the hourglass, and disappear into the past.

I’ve always burned my time in the pursuit of work success; since I was a teenager that’s been the main focus of my life. To get to that next step, to make more money, to take care of those who were counting on me.

Now, when I’m desperately trying to take care of myself, it’s a struggle to allocate the time. It seems selfish and wrong, an opinion that has been further reinforced by various reactions that I’ve had to working on myself. All of this runs through my head over and over, and as a result those minutes tick away while I do nothing but ruminate and mope and struggle with myself.

I keep coming back to Yeats, two stanzas from The Second Coming running in my mind over and over again:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;  
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,  

The best lack all conviction, while the worst  
Are full of passionate intensity.

My ego doesn’t allow me to add myself the ranks of the best, but the lack of conviction is where I keep finding myself. The passionate intensity of those who wish to make of me what I’m not, to push me back to the place where I hurt, to decide what is best for me without thought and without concern…I run up against that all the time.

I know that I can’t hold out much longer, and I keep coming back to the fight between doing what is right, what is easy, and what is best for me but hurtful for others. I’ve never been one to put myself first, and I was told that it would be painful. Just how painful, though, was nothing I was prepared for.

I’ve always fought for what I thought was right, but it always involved fighting for others. Even today, nothing gets me more motivated then pain in those I love, or needs of those I love. I keep being told that I should, I need, I must apply the same fierce devotion to fighting for myself. It’s a radical departure from the way I am, the way I have been so it’s not been an easy path to take.

So, here I am, taking two steps forward and one back as I try and make sense of it all.

All the while, time moves on.