Finally Fall

It's one of my favorite kinds of days- windy, chilly, and overcast. I'm sitting on my patio at home, watching the occasional bird fly from tree to tree and the wind bully the leaves around the yard. I've been stressing out about what classes I am taking next semester- time is running out for Honors priority registration. But at the same time, I'm so excited. Picking classes is kind of like paving the way to my future in a sense. I'm declaring International Business as my minor. Needless to say, my dad's excited. But all these occupational doors are opening up- I've always wanted to be a writer and I always will be (one day the world will see it too) but now I am considering law school, being a professor, teaching English in a foreign country, and working as a creative writer for Disney, aka being an Imagineer (the best job ever). Ahh! Not only am I giddy thinking about it, I'm also freezing.

I'm not sure who's even reading this blog but it keeps me entertained so that's all that matters, I think. The more outlets a writer has, the better.

Time is a funny thing. I have found, for the most part, that we as humans believe time to be some sort of flighty temptress, flitting through our fingers like a wired hummingbird or a lover's hand. We accuse it of raping our days and leaving us with the musty twilight and a to-do list that reaches far and wide. But I think that we are the ones who molest time, steal it and try to squeeze every last drop once we have wasted it and gnawed it down like a strawberry stump. We are the perpatrators, we are the thieves.
And I wonder why we squander time as much as we do when we claim to prize it more than anything else. Everyone craves more, more, more of time. A stressed college student begs for more on her last leg of a research paper. A dying man, struggling to compose a last minute wish list tries to befriend time. To everyone, time is precious. But we still toss it aside and convince ourselves we'll make use of it later.
Maybe it is because we cannot face the seriousness of life if we are being conscious of our allotted time span. Maybe when we act responsibly, we feel mundane and stuck and good to no one, like a penny tails up, heads down in the dark gutter.
But sooner or later, we have got to meet Time halfway. Acknowledge our flaws, scribble down our thoughts, and figure out a way to work in sync, or else we will reach that place where the road meets the sky and think, "Did I really let that slip through my fingers?" Life isn't composed of what we have not done, rather it is a mashup of everything we have seen or loved or experienced. It is composed of nows, as I like to remember Mr. Adams telling us in a song he wrote.
Sleeping through the pain, putting the nonsense on the shelf only gives Time more reason to attack us later. And chances are, we will probably be caught off-guard.
Maybe we should shake Time's hand. Do what we want to do, love what we want to love, and say to hell with what we don't- the things that waste time. Accomplish something. Embrace time. Because no one likes to fizzle out and realize, like a parachuter fumbling with his parachute as the ground looms larger below him, that we have none left.
Ironically, I just wasted time I could have spent on doing my College Algebra writing that.