Urgent

August 9, 2019

Sitting on a couch in Minneapolis with a best friend I haven’t seen in a year, we’re swiping through the dating app I don’t really want to have. I’m declining every guy, including the ones that look like it could possibly not be a complete no. She’s protesting jokingly, but after twenty minutes and what seems like two hundred men, she’s telling me I’m too selective. That’s a kind word for picky. I tell her I’m pretty good at dissecting these profiles and I’m not going to swipe on a guy who isn’t going to go past a few messages. She says I’ll never know and maybe someone will surprise me! I say I don’t have time or energy to waste on maybes, somedays, and possibilities.

I think I’m going to take the LSAT. I bought study materials, have a study plan, and started getting to work. But I haven’t signed up for a date to take the test. I want to study first, be prepared, and then sign up. And I don’t know when I’ll be ready. My mom tells me just to sign up and take it, that I can always retake it if I need to study more. But I don’t have time to spend not studying well or right the first time. I can’t risk taking the test multiple times.

I can tell it’s getting to be time to leave my job. To find a new challenge, to locate opportunities to grow and continue in my career. But I don’t know when I should leave, I don’t know when I should start looking for jobs. My boss takes maternity leave in a matter of days, and I can’t leave before she comes back. Can I leave right when she comes back? How do I plan for that? How much notice do I have to give? My dad tells me to go day-by-day and wait, that I’ll know when the time is right. But I don’t have endless days to spend.

I have this sense of urgency when I look at a clock. Like every minute that passes that isn’t being spent bringing something of tangible value is wasted completely and lost forever. But it’s funny, I don’t hear any ticking.

I don’t hear the ticking of the clock counting down my life.

It can’t be a clock because a clock is steady. Each second measured, each minute identical, each hour exact, an expected path through the day, and a reset each night. Whatever is driving me is off the rails. It isn’t slowing and it isn’t stopping.

I keep searching for it though. Because while the clock is silent every time I look, there’s something running me forward. Something reminding me I don’t have time to waste on bound-to-fail relationships or pointless potential directions for life or days at a job that don’t add anything.

I close my eyes and listen to silence. There is no ticking but there is a pace, a speed.

The speedometer of my life is inching higher and higher. I was at a full stop with brain surgery, the radiator was shot, but the mechanic was good and since I’ve been able to put my foot back on the pedal I’ve been slowly picking up speed. Every time I had a new diagnosis or a new treatment or surgery I had to hit the brakes, pop the hood, and wait until it was fixed. I couldn’t control when I stopped or for how long, so I simply learned to go faster when I could so that I could gain as much road as possible before the next visit to the mechanic. And I really don’t want to stall. I’m driving too fast on a road that can’t handle my speed in a car that’s protesting the pace but I don’t know when I’ll break down next and I have to get somewhere before I do. But I don’t know where I have to get to so I just keep driving and speeding up so I can increase my chances of getting there and I think the map was supposed to be in the glove box but it isn’t and I don’t have anyone with me to take the wheel and it’s getting dark and I’m getting tired and I don’t know where I’m going or when the road ends so I have to keep driving. I can’t let off the gas because I don’t know what will happen when I do and I can’t be forced to pull over again.

I don’t hear a clock; I feel an engine. I can’t figure out how to let off the gas or unclench my fingers from the wheel. My foot’s turned to lead and my knuckles have turned white and I couldn’t get the speedometer down if I wanted to.

So no, I don’t hear any ticking.

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