Time Flies When You’re Not Having Fun
I wrote a post twelve years ago called Year of the Charley Horse. I was on the cusp of something new, and I was hopeful. As the advent of this past Lunar New Year was rolling around, as I ignored the manufactured ritual of Valentine’s Day, I was reflecting on what was coming for me this time around, in another year of the horse (a fire horse). Was I hopeful this time around? What are my feelings? What am I doing with myself?
What else is new?
What an eerie coincidence that back in 2014, I was unsure of how my life as a newly single mother was going to pan out. I was celebrating the passing of what I had considered to have been an auspicious year (2013), where I achieved and started new journeys.
I was busy getting busy. Time stops for no one, no rest for the wicked. Twelve years have passed, and good grief, was I due for a rest. I used to have this print hanging on my wall as a teenager:
“Time flies whether you’re having fun or not,” I remember when I got it, I thought it was awfully clever, because, as all teenagers do, I was always having fun, so who cared! I was so funny. If I could go back in time, I’d slap my teenage self in the face and tell her to pay attention to what was happening around her. To stop being so self-absorbed and to quit thinking the good times would never end.
Didn’t have these on my bingo card 😫
The me of today is slightly more bitter. Has seen and done entirely too much. I woke up today to the news that they were dropping bombs on another country. And that there had been retaliation in the form of more bombs on a base where I had spent some time during my days in the military. Didn’t have that on my bingo card for 2026.
I had to reach out to a friend; we have photos of us on that base, and I sent him the video I saw from the news outlet overseas. (Don’t even get me started on the disparity between international news outlets vs domestic ones. Good grief.) And we commiserated over the absurdity of it all. Those troops didn’t deserve any of that. I lamented the time spent on that base. Gone forever.
What now?
I wasn’t even paying that much attention to the Winter Olympics other than when it came across my feed on social media (and because I was following some updates on one certain hockey player, IYKYK 😉 and if you don’t know too bad). I don’t have television here in Guatemala, so I am a little out of the loop. I don’t even get the local news, not that I watched the news when I was in the US, so this isn’t really off-brand for me. But here I thought it was safe to be crushing on a hockey player and just reveling in that for a little while.
I thought all was good and done after both teams won gold, was moving along with my life, and attention span. What scrolled on right after the news of the bombs? Apparently, they were putting that hockey player on SNL, and there was an uproar over that. So now I had to dig into that, and boy, I wish I hadn’t. Why can’t we have anything nice?
I don’t get political anymore. I can barely handle navigating my own life; I can’t even handle what is happening all around me. Just when I think it’s fine to like something, it all gets shit on, and then I’m like, well, time to crawl back into my hole of nothingness, back to paying attention to nobody. Nothing is safe. Not even my own thoughts.
What was I thinking?
What was the me of 2014 thinking? And twelve years doesn’t feel like a long time ago in the scheme of things, but it’s a hell of a lot of living. So much happened to me in that decade. Time flew, and I wasn’t having fun. I wasn’t coasting or living my best life. Not from where I was sitting. I was working hard to raise two kids at the most trying time of their lives. I was grinding away, surviving being on my own, having to make every decision on my own.
I have moved, gotten jobs, lost jobs, moved again, bought and sold a house, made a career and then lost it. All for what? I don’t even know. I am so fucking tired of it all. Time didn’t slow down for me to reward this hustle. When do I get my break? Hopefully now. All of this, the endless cycle, the grinding away until all that’s left is misshapen edges that don’t resemble anyone I ever knew. This girl? Have we met her?
New Year’s Day 2026, January 1, was a complete washout. It was only 4 days of a motherless existence. I was EXHAUSTED mentally, physically, and especially emotionally. That is why I was so excited for the Lunar New Year; the Year of the Fire Horse was another chance for me to reset. To start again with intention. Do I know what I am doing this time around? Absolutely not. But exhausted doesn’t mean done.
What the hell do I know?
I’m not even 100% confident that I believe in anything anymore. But I do believe that I am damned good at compartmentalizing my confusing feelings and getting down to the business of whatever I set my mind to, come hell or high water. And this time around, that means taking care of unfinished business.
My book is the unfinished business that has HAUNTED me for more than a decade. Before that the being a writer has haunted me for most of my life. I have always been a writer. Stick a pen in my hand, and away I go. I don’t even know what else I do besides read and write. Since I was little. I am done with things getting in the way of what I am supposed to be doing.
I’ve had this story inside of me for years. It was screaming in a dark corner inside of me when I was getting divorced. But back in 2014, I wasn’t ready to pay attention to that screaming. Everything conspired to let time slip away from me, and the screaming continued. I was in the wrong life, the wrong environment, the wrong job, around the wrong people, always distracted.
Not paying attention to me. It was always a problem for future me. Well, like Momma said in Waterboy — the chickens are coming home to roost, Bobby Boucher. Future me has come a-knockin’. I’m out of excuses, out of distractions. There is nothing but this.
Compartmentalization, here I come!
I’m shoving everything else in a box and sticking it in a drawer called things that don’t matter. The drama back in the US? Don’t matter. The shitty relationship with my mother? Don’t matter. The fact that I don’t know what I am doing from one day to the next? Don’t matter. Any regrets about decades passing and feeling like I have nothing to show for it? Don’t matter. Shove it in the box, bitch. Ain’t nobody got time for that.
I can’t care enough about the fact that I orchestrated my situation. I did this to myself. No one else. I brought myself down here, I put myself back in this house. I am not unhappy. I am confused. Like, why was this so important? Why now? Is it a cosmic intervention or a karmic mistake? I don’t know. I am no more sure now than I was twelve years ago on that February day when I wrote that entry. But I was determined to find out.
I plan to fuck around and find out this time, too. Let’s see what happens.
