Living a Long Life
Time is weird. Perception of how much time has passed isn’t consistent. It seems to go by faster when you’re enjoying what you’re doing, and slower when you don’t. The time spent in five minutes waiting in line can seem equivalent to a whole evening with friends. While this is all true in the moment, I think it’s actually the opposite when judging time in retrospect. If you looked back on your week and saw that you mostly just ran errands or waited on a call, you’d wonder where all your time went.
In part I think we measure time by how many life-changing decisions and small risks we’ve made, even if they’re only decisions that make our lives different in some tiny way. It’s easier to look back and see where all the time went, if a lot has changed. The year I graduated college, 2007, seems like forever ago to me. Since then I’ve:
- had a tech internship in a different state
- started grad school
- was a nose-to-the-grindstone first-year math PhD student
- joined the computer science department
- did research with 3 different professors at UNC
- left grad school
- became completely financially independent
- had two internships
- sold a car
- bought a car
- bought a house
- lived alone
- lived with an amazing roommate
- lost said amazing roommate
- gained a cat
- kicked the cat out of the house
- brought the cat back in the house
- applied and interviewed for several jobs, got a job
- left a job
- started building freelance websites, and then a consulting business
- started teaching Zumba
- started a volunteer class teaching middle school girls how to program
- got a bunch of new tech toys (smartphone, ipad, ipod touch)
- started developing for said new tech toys
- started working on a startup
- took a mindfulness class
- got really into personal development – steve pavlina, pema chodron, paul graham
- finally started to get organized (hooray!)
- started a blog
- got involved with swing dancing, rock climbing, Zumba, indoor soccer, and ultimate frisbee
- remodeled my kitchen through a website barter
- lost a boyfriend
- gained a boyfriend
- lost a bunch of friends
- gained a bunch of friends
- learned a lot about relationships in general
- traveled all over the place- CA (twice), WV (twice), FL, SC, NY, MD, PA, OH, IN, KY, VA, Germany, and many trips to TN
A lot of those things were the results of small, quick decisions to move in one way or another. I got my summer internship in MD because a friend told me to apply, so I sent in a last-minute application on night and got accepted. One day I needed adventure, so I booked a flight to Germany. Without a whole lot of previous planning, I emailed a local middle school to ask if I could put together a class to teach web programming. I just applied to Y Combinator, only because my roommate got a job with a Y Combinator startup. My roommate got her job within two weeks when an ex-boyfriend suggested (after he’d gotten a similar position) she apply. On a whim I went to a Zumba class, which led to Zumba training, which led to teaching two Zumba classes. And so on and so forth. Even the past year seems like it’s lasted a lot longer than the previous two, because the first two were spent in grad school, where I didn’t have time for so many life-changing adventures.
My conclusion: if you want to life a long life, live a very full one.