As I get older, and my job and my personal life seem to get more serious, I feel like I’m constantly behind.

Throw in some hobbies, a side-hustle or two, and a writing practice, and I feel like I’m constantly coming up short.

I’ve often heard that life is about sacrifices. To do anything well requires focus.

I think I have a form of anxiety related to FOMO – Fear of Missing Out.

There’s so much I want to do and be good at – salsa dancing, jiujitsu, chess, building a game-changing deep technology startup that helps clean up the planet, Spanish.

Travel the world, father some children, spend time with the friends and family that I love being around. Go to concerts and dance parties. Oh and I still need to do errands, go to the doctor, clear up that issue with customer service, make food and coffee and clean up and shower and laundry.

What can I cut out? What is #1? Some of the most successful people seem to have made their business their one and only – everything else is secondary. Seems miserable.

Warren Buffet says to pick something like 25 things you’d like to do and then circle the top 5 and forget everything else. Let’s try:

1. My partner
2. Friends/Family
3. Health? Seems important
4. Work
5. Spending time in nature?

Pretty hard to do.

I guess there is no answer here. It’s just one of those things that’s frustrating and beautiful about life. There is so much good shit out there.

Makes me think of Steve Jobs’ messy desk. It just kept piling on and I’m quite sure he had a lot going on. But he made some pretty cool shit. And he did believe in focus and saying no to the 100 other good ideas that are out there.

I just need to be okay with the proverbial messy desk. And keep a few good priorities. The rest will happen or it won’t.

Fuck social media.

These are the words that Mary Carlin, the mother of the great comedian George Carlin, inscribed in his yearbook.  

It took him a number of tries but he consistently reoriented and iterated his work to be the truest expression of himself.

It must be so freeing. And the best way to do truly good work.

Am I being my true self? In all ways?

I should ask this more.

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Looking at the world like Monet yields unbelievable levels of presence and ‘being in the now’.

Think about Monet’s paintings – half of the painting is often the reflection that he sees. I think people mostly don’t notice reflections in glass or mirrors or water. People often don’t pay attention to the way light is dappled or areas of light vs shade.

I’m no artist – but just noticing these things makes me feel completely present. I’m aware of where I am, what’s in the world around me. There’s actually a ton of beauty in those angles on the world, and they’re almost hidden in plain sight.

Keep an eye out for those things and you’ll know you’re in the here and the now.

I heard it somewhere from some rabbi.

It’s so easy to want to stay comfy/cozy especially in the colder months.

It’s helped me to start thinking ‘get out of bed like a lion’ when I wake up. That thought helps me rocket out of bed and get the day started.

Try it.

It’s from Marcus Aurelius’s “Meditations“, which is chock full of stoic wisdom.

He says something to the effect of, “The river is flowing. Everything is dying.”

I felt it today getting started on a morning run. Boy were my muscles sore.

I felt it today in the blustery morning, Fall whispering to us, leaves already beginning to drop, foreshadowing the turning of time.

I’m hearing it in a friend who’s stressed about having to care for her aging parent. Soon we may be the parents, and eventually the ones who need care.

We are currently in the Hebrew month of Elul, the month leading into Rosh Hashannah and Yom Kippur, the holiest days of the year for Jews where we take stock of our lives this past year and set intentions for the coming year.

There are poems that are read on these days in synagogues around the world, framing life as a passing shadow, a disappearing cloud, a fading flower.

It seems morbid, but every time I read something like that or think about it, it instantly makes me present and grateful. I say the ‘river is flowing’ thing every morning as part of a gratitude practice and it works.

Try it. Wake up to your life and the fact that it is ending.