The facts of life

My world, it seems, is all about tradeoffs. Tit for tat. Ying and yang. Balance.

Oh, not balance between work and a personal life, mind you, but rather a balance between fun work stuff and not-so-fun work stuff. And you know what Mrs. Garrett used to say, "You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both, and there you have the facts of life."

Blair and Tootie aside, the facts of my life include the following list: (1) for every night I spend in a beautiful city like Boston on the company dime, I spend five nights in exotic locales like Pocahontas and Harrison; (2) when I spend six hours listening to a book on tape and it ends badly, it makes me really, really mad; and (3) I am destined to die an old maid because I only want to date boys I can't have. 654 miles and two tanks of gas later, I have a bit of clarity.

Yesterday I was a guest on a very large panel for a seminary/grad school Q&A with some college seniors, and one of the panelists made the statement to the students, "Enjoy the last few months of this year, because I can promise you, you'll never in your life have more free time." The students laughed, wondering how the old people who are no loner writing papers and studying for tests could possibly be more busy than they are, but you know, that statement is so true.

Where does all of my time go? It seems like Monday to Friday is so much shorter than it used to be. Granted, the time change has given me five extra hours this week since I can't seem to stop waking up at 5:30 a.m., but I don't feel like I accomplished more. Every day my to-do list gets longer, my patience shorter, and I have one less day to live on this Earth. My life gets consumed by meetings and lists and all the many things that seem so very important at the time that, a mere week later, I struggle to remember what the note on my calendar means as I do my weekly productivity report.

I talked to my niece, Hope, on the phone this morning and realized that next month she'll be five. FIVE. What in the world happened to the last 60 months of my life? I have more handbags and more gray hair, but other than that, what do I have to show for the past five years?

I really need to get a life. Perhaps I should write that on next week's to-do list.