My sanity is in jeopardy. The only thing that can save it is movement. I feel the need to always be doing something, or else I feel like I’m losing time. I’m not really losing time. There is no time to lose. That feeling stems from years of doing nothing. Years telling myself I was going to do something, then never do it. Now that I have changed, my demands change. I do work on the things I tell myself to work on each day. It just isn’t enough to do some. Even after it’s done, I can see open time. Slots where I can sneak in more. I know that if I do it, it will save me a day or two. It doesn’t take much to save another day. There is always downtime in the day. So today, I have to fill up the empty minutes, to maintain some sanity.
I can’t sit still without feeling the weight of unused time pressing against my skull. It’s not anxiety—it’s memory. A memory of who I used to be when I let the hours slip away like they meant nothing. That version of me haunts the quiet moments. So now I fill them. Not with noise, but with purpose. I work not just to accomplish tasks, but to silence the voice of regret that still echoes in the back of my mind. Each minute used with intention pushes that voice further out of reach.
It’s not that I think I can outpace time—I know that’s impossible. But I can fill it. I can pour so much movement, so much progress into it, that the past no longer catches up to me. When I get ahead, even just by a few hours, it changes everything. I breathe easier. I speak with more certainty. I feel like I’ve honored the second chance I gave myself when I finally stopped lying about what I was going to do.
Some say that kind of pace will burn you out, but for me, it’s the opposite. This movement is my oxygen. As long as I’m building, creating, or pushing forward—even in the smallest ways—I feel sane. I feel like I’m exactly where I’m meant to be. Still becoming, still proving to myself that I’ve changed. The work is never the burden; it’s the lifeline.
