August 22^nd, 2008

I frequently awake to familiar dark feelings of regret. Recently—and with ever more depth and regularity—this mood is my first taste of the new hours of my days.

A sadness. A melancholy. A low-grade panic that all I am capable of doing in this life is not being realised. It isn’t so much that I had accomplished nothing at all, it's just that as I grow older and the lines of my life deepen into recognizable lines (and as that wonderful swirling chaos of Great Potential became a pattern of familiarity I do nothing but look back on) options that once are open to me are quietly closing. Doors that I could have opened if life were longer are being locked and chained. No matter how productive, no life in this white Western world could realise all its potential.

There's just not enough time.

But today I rose, suddenly embarrassed at this smugness. My dad was right: “You kids are never happy.” So much now so much before ... what, did I somehow think I was going to live forever?

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