here’s the thing: sometimes, the days feel like they just stretch on forever. sometimes it feels like there’s just so much goddamn time, that you can put things off, that you can wait until tomorrow, or next week. sometimes it feels like there’s no rush.

but here’s the other thing: it only feels that way. and before you know it, years have passed and you didn’t do what you wanted to. you half-assed it, or you let other people pick up the slack. you figured you could do it tomorrow. before you know it, you find yourself unable to even make the attempt. the chances are gone.

so that’s the context, the container, that everything in life fits into. your ideas, your work, your relationships, yr own self. we fit into this tiny container of time, and when it’s full there’s no way to empty it and start again. so the conclusion should be, don’t hesitate: enact your ideas, do yr work to the best of your ability, value and honour your relationships and love yrself as hard as you can. that should be the conclusion, but it usually isn’t.

and believe me, i’m not an expert. i carry forward ‘nuff regret and plenty of missed moments. i don’t tell the people in my life i love them enough. i am pretty fucking good at the working hard thing, but everything else suffers for it, usually.

this past week, a close relative of mine was found dead in her apartment, probably from an epileptic seizure. we had been trying to get a hold of her since wednesday, but apparently others had tried since monday. she was found on friday, five days after she died.

here’s the thing: even though she’s been part of my life since birth, we were never really close. when i was a little kid she always kinda thought i was devil spawn, and when i actually renounced religion at an early age, she (devout catholic woman) actually thought i was the devil for pretty much the rest of my life (and maybe i am). we even went through a phase where at family gatherings, she would ask questions about me, with me in the room, to my mom. “is he doing well in school?” or “is he still playing that music?”… i would just stare at her and say, “I’M RIGHT HERE, YOU CAN JUST ASK ME.” we eventually evened out and she started acknowledging me again, but she always kind of looked at me suspiciously, like i was going to murder her in her in the night. turns out, that would be the epilepsy. she often thought of her epilepsy as a demon, and she would pray to keep it at bay. i wish she would have taken better care of herself instead.

and so i’m sitting here, the day after finding out that she was rotting in her apartment for five days after dying alone in the night, taking it all in. i didn’t tell her i loved her enough, and we didn’t really gel, ever. i wish i knew her better. i always thought she had had a really interesting life, but i never asked about it, ‘cause it would come with so much religious BS. and i wish she knew me better. i think instead of being afraid of me, she might have been proud, or at least, thought i was worth talking to directly. but it’s too late. her container of time filled up, and no one can add any more to that. and i’m sitting here looking at my container, wondering how i can make it bigger, how i might cheat and stretch it or modify it so i can get a bit more space. this feels like an understandable kind of greed.

so yeah. i’m not really qualified to give advice. but if you’re anything like me, there are probably a lot of people in yr life that you love, and maybe you don’t tell them enough. maybe you think they’ll be around tomorrow, and maybe they will be. but sometimes, they’re not. and often, you don’t really know when the container’s gonna be full. one day you wake up, and their phone line is cut, their eyes are closed, and the container is full. you can cast pronouncements into the wind to make yrself feel better, but that is just what it is.

we all know this intuitively on some level. DON’T FUCKING WAIT. BEGIN IT NOW. if yr sitting having a morning tea or whatever and you think of a someone and you think, “damn, i really love that person,” find some way to tell them. you don’t have to be weird about it. just move forward with sincerity and honesty. it will probably feel weird at first, but the more you practice, the better you’ll get. i’ve been trying to get better at this for a while. i stumble constantly. but this week has been a good reminder. it’s worth the fucking effort.

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p.s. as a totally fucking unrelated side note, and not tied to any recent events, THERE IS NEVER A BAD TIME TO BACK UP YR HARD DRIVES. if you have one backup, make another. take that extra backup to a trusted friend’s place and tell them, this little box is full of my work and tools and memories. don’t lose it. seriously. digital storage is fucking cheap, and yr gonna be hella bummed when years worth of digital photo albums, and music collections, and documents, and whatever else, vanishes in a single moment with the hollow clicking of a dead hard drive. BEGIN IT NOW.