I don’t know if it’s because I just turned thirty, but I’ve been feeling deeply introspective lately.
Every morning as I wake up and my feet touch the floor, I start thinking about how I want to spend my time on earth. Is that a morbid thought? Am I alone in feeling like time is falling away? I’m not sure. I just know that as I pour my morning coffee, these thoughts continue, spiralling, slipping between my fingers like water. They whisk me away into a dance that I can’t stop, pulling me tighter into their clutches — spinning me in circles again and again until I’m sweating and crying and my heart is pounding into my breastbone.
Perhaps I’m just romanticising the way my mind and thoughts are set loose when the anxiety kicks in. But this morning I felt compelled to get these feelings out instead of becoming a victim to them like usual.
So here I am, the sun still waiting to rise and coffee in hand, ready to ask the question “how do I want to spend my time on earth?” and maybe feel confident in my answer.
I used to have plenty of ideas of how I wanted to spend my time on earth.
I wanted to be a doctor. I wanted to be a history teacher. I wanted to be a marketing coordinator. I wanted to work with postpartum mothers. I wanted to run a small business from home. But I think a lot of my ideas — which bundled together like that makes me sound like an overexcited kindergartener announcing they want to be an astronaut and veterinarian in a single breath — came from what I thought I should do with my life and not what I actually wanted to do.
To be honest, there was never any passion for the careers I chased. I never yearned for them.
Now that doesn’t mean I didn’t always put my heart and soul into the work. I did. I was devoted. I went in early and stayed back late. I worked through lunch breaks and sacrificed my hobbies. But they were ultimately paths to financial stability and paying a mortgage and putting food on the table. I never felt some sort of inner peace or contentment. I never felt like I was somehow aligned with the universe. I never even felt like I had uncovered the mystery of my life’s true purpose. My work was never who I was, it was just something I did. And it deeply saddens me to realise that I’ve never felt passionate about anything I’ve ever done for work. I don’t even know what that feels like.
I feel compelled to take a lesson from that though. It’s funny that when we think about how we want to spend our time on earth our first thought is always work. So perhaps the lesson is that while some of us might find our identities and life’s purposes in our work, not everyone can or wants to entangle the two. (Yes, let’s go with that.)
I can’t help but think back to yesterday.
I was bathing in the morning sunlight spilling into the living room, casting everything in gold, a book in my hands and a story unfolding — and I realised that in moments like this the overwhelming thoughts begin to quiet. When I’m lost in the pages of a book, my anxiety and intrusive thoughts actually take a break. There’s a feeling of contentment here. A heavy weight lifting from my shoulders. A sort of inner peace that feels like what I think meditating feels like.
It’s the same feeling of contentment that settles in my chest as I write. I’m simultaneously lost in the story I’m writing and so grounded in the current moment that I’m not thinking about anything else. The times where I’m pulling words from my mind and organising them into somewhat coherent sentences has become a meditative practice of sorts. It’s here that the invading thoughts of “how do I want to spend my time on earth?” and “am I using my time here productively?” don’t completely overtake me. I don’t feel like I’m wasting precious time. I’m too focused on telling a story, on understanding my characters, on finding the perfect word to complete a sentence, that the anxiety I’ve been feeling in tumultuous waves lately is nothing but a distant thrum.
Does this mean that the answer to this question that’s been hanging heavily over my head is so simple? Is it possible that how I want to spend my time on earth is not a question that needs some elaborate or complicated answer?
I think we take questions like “how do I want to spend my time on earth?”, “am I using my time here productively?” and “what do you want to do with the rest of your life?” as something that needs these poignant, life-affirming answers.
Perhaps because it’s hard for some of us to accept that we might just desire lives that are actually so simple. We don’t all need to change the world. We don’t all need to become famous or aspirational. We don’t all need to have these picturesque, social media worthy lives with perfect homes, perfect relationships, perfect clothes, perfect past times. We just need to find something that is ours, something that brings us pleasure, something that makes us say “yes, this was my purpose all along”.
And that something could be a career. But that something could also be a person, or that something could be a newsletter, or that something could be a sport, or that something could be simple and quiet and a hobby that’s only for fun. It just needs to set your soul ablaze.
For me, it’s obviously reading and writing. As long as I’m doing both of these somewhere in my day I’m overflowing with happiness.
I’m currently a stay at home mother of two toddlers. To help support my family I run my Etsy shop from home. But my true passion lies in the stories I consume and the stories I create and the stories I share. In-between mothering and my small business, I’m learning to devote small moments of time to reading and writing — and my life feels dreamily complete because of that. I can support my family and do the things I am passionate about. I wish that I had learned to balanced things like this when I was working in marketing four years ago. Perhaps then I wouldn’t have burnt out and grown so resentful of that workplace.
I like to hope that writing will become something that will financially support my family in the future. Maybe I’ll publish the book I’m currently writing. Maybe this newsletter will continue to grow and grow. I’m so grateful for everyone who takes the time to read, like, comment on and share my pieces — and I’m already so fortunate to have readers who have chosen to become paid subscribers and support my work in that way. But as much as I hope for all of this to happen, it’s important for me to write regardless. Because it brings me pleasure. It’s where I lose myself and come back to myself. It’s where I can let my chaotic mind rest — even for just a single breath.
I’m no longer afraid to claim that work is just work to me. It’s not who I am. It’s a vessel that allows me to spend a few hours at the end of my day doing the reals things that I love.
So what’s the conclusion here? How do I want to spend my time on earth?
I don’t ever want to pigeonhole myself — so as long as stories are somewhere in the mix, I think I will always be content with my time spent here. I just want to create stories as I sip on coffee and nibble on blocks of dark chocolate. I want to consume stories in the patch of sun in my living room until my heart bursts with happiness. I want to spend time with my children and husband. I want to laugh and smile and cry and love deeply and be held in return. I want to embrace the opportunities that come forth so I can understand myself a little bit better with each passioning year. I want a quiet life, a simple life.
It doesn’t matter what I do as a career. It doesn’t matter what I choose to do to support my family. Just as long as I’m supporting them makes me happy — but I’ve decided that it doesn’t have to become something my whole existence hinges on. Because how I spend my time on earth isn’t what I do for work, it’s my life as a whole.
What I know for sure is that although I might not spend my time here changing the world or doing something spectacular, maybe through books and storytelling I can maybe make just one person’s world a little more peaceful. And I think that’s beautiful.
And so worth it.
I hope you enjoyed this stream of consciousness. I never know where they’re headed until I’ve reached the end. I’d love to hear about how you want to spend your time on earth.
Until next time,
— Madeline
What a beautiful underrated piece! I just recorded a YouTube video with a similar message and I hope to link this post in the description if you don’t mind !