Life goes faster than you think, so don’t blink

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” -Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Being a senior in college is fun. It’s just the work part…

I work four days a week at my newspaper and two days at the library, in addition to four days of school. I work six days a week, totaling about 50 hours. Plus, I’m taking five classes (all upper division and two 400-level).

Most of my days are spent foundering and catching up. My life is frittered by detail! as Henry David Thoreau would tell me. Do a little reading for my afternoon class in my morning class, work on essays at the newspaper in any spare moments I find. That essay due tomorrow? Yeah, I’ll start it tomorrow, since I have to work on today’s homework now.

I had an essay due at 11 a.m. Wednesday, but since I had been out till almost midnight working at the newspaper the night before, I had not even started it Wednesday morning. So I got to school early and worked on it from 8:30 a.m. until 11:07, when I ran to my professor’s office to turn it in.

I hadn’t finished the essay, and it was a rough rough draft. It’s a D paper, my professor told me. Luckily I can turn in a second draft this week.

Oh, this is a complaining post bla bla blah. Nope, it’s me saying how I want to change to make the most of every moment. BAM! Take that, literary conventions.

I love being this busy, seriously. I’m a copy editor for the newspaper and have my own desk, where I sit as much as eight hours every night we are working on a newspaper (Sunday to Wednesday). And this is the first time I’ve had a group of friends that I hang out a lot with at school.

I just signed up for classes for the spring semester a few days ago. And it hit me that I will be graduating in May, and then I’ll have join the real world. I love my life right now, and being a copy editor and being around a group of journalists is fantastic.

I wish I could just take a portrait of my life now, because life goes by too fast. I still feel like a high school senior.

Two country songs have inspired me to try to live every moment deliberately:

The first, “Live Like You Were Dying” by Tim McGraw, is about a conversation the narrator has with an older man who had a car accident in his 40s. The man survived the accident, but realized any moment could be his last and began to celebrate his life.

An’ he said:
“I went skydiving
I went Rocky Mountain climbing
I went 2.7 seconds on a bull named Blue Manchu
And I loved deeper
And I spoke sweeter
And I gave forgiveness I’d been denying.”
And he said:
“Someday I hope you get the chance
To live like you were dying.”

In the second, “Don’t Blink” by Kenny Chesny, a 102-year-old man is interviewed on TV and gives his secret to life:

“Don’t blink
Just like that you’re six years old and you take a nap and you
Wake up and you’re twenty-five and your high school sweetheart becomes your wife
Don’t blink
You just might miss your babies growing like mine did
Turning into moms and dads next thing you know your ‘better half’
Of fifty years is there in bed
And you’re praying God takes you instead
Trust me friend a hundred years goes faster then you think
So Don’t blink.”

I’m only in college once. To the best of my abilities, I will make every moment count. I also want to make more time for God. I need to do more for God, read my Bible more, and care for other people more. I need to stop worrying about today and live for eternity.

Because, as a wise old man once said, “Life goes faster than you think.”

Updated 11/2/2012 at 8:26 p.m.