need twice the amount of energy and three times the hours in the day. Life is too short, and the human body is inadequate. The need to sleep feels like a constant forced pitstop to the millions of things I want to do. Everything I do feels like it is rushed by the next, leaving me perpetually impatient. 

I can enjoy the moment. The things that happen around me are nothing if not beautiful and enriching, and I have learned, over the years, to live within whatever I am within. However, the days end too soon.

I need to work, and I love my work. I play video games, I write about video games. But I also want to talk to the thousands of new people around me and hear what they have to say. I want to venture into whatever new town I’m in and drink their drinks, eat their food, climb their hills, and chat with their weirdos. I want to lie on my back and stare at a new sky for a few hours. I want to enjoy a quiet, calm, relaxed moment with someone special. I want to go out and see what the big activity is in the place I now live. I want to just spend some time walking around the local thrift shops. I want to argue with someone about why they’re wrong about whatever they’re wrong about. But. There aren’t enough hours in the day.

I feel that, even when I am doing any of these things, I am watching the time tick away from my limited time with the other. Each one is a sacrifice of the other, and am I maybe choosing the wrong one, and I need to rush the one I am doing for the sake of the other. This is foolish thinking and results in a half-experience of everything. Living in the moment is talked about by people far more collected than I am and, I suspect, leading much less busy lives with much more organized minds.

I never stay still. The need to be doing something keeps me going, and the fear of not experiencing everything all the time is an endless cause of anxiety. I have to work, and I have to sleep. These are my needs to live. Thankfully, one of those is something I take pride in, the other one is fine, but it takes too long.

I have been places where I have done little more than work and head to bars in the evening. I then leave and feel I haven’t experienced the place in the way I should have. I meet other backpackers who rib me for not climbing this mountain or tubing through that cave, but I didn’t have enough hours in the day, and it weighs on my shoulders. Maybe I could have done it had I had more energy, or been in the right state of mind, or just maybe had fewer nights in bars. But I didn’t, and there’s a million things to do, and so little time in the day, and the endless need for sleep.

However, time spent eating is never wasted time. I would say time spent working, especially with a job like mine, isn’t wasted either, yet the aggressive anti-capitalist in me resents any need to earn money, no matter how cushy.

But food is never wasted time. I can sit in a restaurant with people for six hours in a day and feel like none of those hours were lost. I’ll happily cook for myself and others in a good kitchen with fresh, local ingredients and end the day feeling fulfilled. Food is more than the simple necessity that sleep is for me; it is a cultural, social experience that should not only be savored but relished. 

I try not to think about the things I haven’t done and look more to the many, many things I have been talented enough to experience. Saying yes at almost every opportunity had served me well, pushing myself past the point of bravery has rarely let me down, breaking the oh-so-thick ice of low-vibration social anxiety has brought great people to me, and taking that offered drink when my legs are just about to give out has not led me to anything but greatness yet.

I just need more hours in the day and a body that doesn’t need to sleep.