The Time Will Pass Anyway

15 Jun The Time Will Pass Anyway

I have a bit (a lot) of time anxiety. I’m incredibly aware of how short life is and how precious the hours of each day are.

I didn’t always used to be this way. When I was 17 I felt like I had all the time in the world to achieve everything I wanted to. But then adulthood happened. I started working full-time, bought a house with my partner, and got a dog. Suddenly time seemed to be disappearing into a black hole. I couldn’t grasp onto it. It was Monday and then it was Friday. It was January and then it was December.

And what exactly was I even doing with that time? It certainly didn’t feel like I was accomplishing my dreams. In fact, I was doing the opposite. Every day I was going to a job I couldn’t stand and wasting hours of my life I would never get back.

And yet for the few years I was working in marketing, even though I hated it and knew it wasn’t the right career for me, I couldn’t bring myself to move on. Why? Well, there were a couple of reasons.

The first was because of the amount of the time and money I had already sunk into this career path. I’d spent four years and $40,000 on university, and then three more working in the industry. It felt like a whole lot of years to just walk away from.

The second was that, not only did I not know what I wanted to do next, but that pursuing a new path would require spending even more years of my precious life, without any guarantee of that path working out either.

I’m a risk-averse person, so this seemed like a bad bet. I was determined to stick with marketing, that is, until I came across this quote one day:

“Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway.” —Earl Nightingale

At that time, I didn’t have a ‘dream’ per se, so it was the last part of the quote that struck me the hardest: “The time will pass anyway.”

And it was. Time was passing regardless of whether I liked what I was doing for a living or not.

So I realized then that I had a choice. I could let the time pass while doing something I didn’t enjoy, OR I could spend it trying to find something that I did. And even if whatever I pursued next also didn’t bring me the fulfillment I was seeking, it would still be better than wasting it in a career that would never, ever be a good fit.

That internal dialogue was all it took for me to quit my final job in marketing and say to myself, “No more!”

Sunk costs be damned, it was time for me to start treating my time more preciously. And even though I thought that’s what I was doing before by sticking with a career I had already dedicated so much to, I was wrong.

I was guarding myself against risk and uncertainty. I was being a coward. Because the real risk doesn’t lie in trying something and it not working out, but in doing nothing at all.

So I took a chance on a new path. Three more years of my life passed as I went back to school and studied publishing and then worked in the industry for two years.

And you know what? That path didn’t end up working either. But never once during that time did I wish I were still working in marketing.

And the even bigger blessing was that when I realized publishing also wasn’t my calling, I was able to move on sooner. I wasn’t clinging onto it like a life raft the way I had with marketing. I thanked that path for all that it taught me, the experiences it provided and the people I met, and then I walked away.

Because my anxiety hasn’t disappeared; time still passing at rapid speed. But thanks to Earl Nightingale’s quote, the only way I spend it now is pursuing work I love.