A small pinprick on a timeline 🕊️

Using a single day as a measuring stick.☀️

Meghan J. Ward

Jul 08, 2022

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“Here I was, just a small pinprick on a timeline – the duration of my life like a single sooty tern flying over the vast sea. Milestone to milestone, waypoint to waypoint. One day I’d be gone, but life would keep going. And the stories people would tell about me long after I’d left… well, perhaps only the stars would know them.”

-Lights to Guide Me Home (from the chapter, My Back to the Sea)

Sometimes I feel odd about how much I think about the fleeting nature of life, the impermanence of things, and how little time we have on this planet to experience everything it has to offer.

I catch myself thinking about these things and wonder, “Do other people think the same way?”

I grieve how quickly my children are growing up, as much as I enjoy spending time with them. My parents are growing older, too. The reality of the inevitable takes my breath away.

I catch myself in moments of stress, thinking, Who the heck cares!? Will anyone really mind that I asked for an extension or decided in a particular moment that something else was more important? That I stepped away from my desk for some much-needed time outside even though it meant ignoring some emails, life logistics, meal-planning and that never-ending to-do list?

When I think about the big picture, I see these individual moments, decisions, stresses and joys as these tiny dots — like pixels in an image.

I see them, but I don’t always use that information to do some good in my life.

I listened to a podcast yesterday that offered some tips to help us find meaning from the inside out (rather than looking for external stimulation or fulfillment). The host (Sarah May) offered tips, and the first one stuck with me: how you spend a day is representative of how you spend your life.

My first reaction was that this isn’t entirely true, that our lives have seasons to them, especially when you’re a freelancer with some control over your schedule. Mine will look like weeks of “head down, work hard,” followed by a month of travel and play. Or summer weeks with more balance than in other parts of the year because the weather is nice. But then I know it’s also true that “real” life is just as much about those mundane days where there isn’t anything particularly Insta-worthy happening.

I need to be careful about how I spend every day so that it’s life-giving to me. I know how it feels when I stay pinned to my desk and miss out on time outside (it sucks). Or when I get wrapped up in staying on top of things instead of just spending time with my kids. Or when I keep pouring into the business because all that time I don’t put in will catch up with me.

I can do better by using this ratio: each day, I need to prioritize my well-being and the things I value. In The Way of Integrity, Martha Beck refers to these choices as one-degree turns.

So, I’m putting that out to you as I head into this short summer season here in the Rockies. Life is short. It’s up to me to balance my days with things I enjoy doing, that lift me up, and match my (proclaimed) values. Some things can wait; others may never get done, and that’s OK. The important items will rise to the surface and I’ll feel happier tackling them when I’ve taken good care of myself.

It starts with me.

→ Read more on this topic with Minutes vs Moments (Reality check: we’re not getting out of this world alive).

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What’s caught my attention lately… ✨

Here’s that podcast episode of Help Me Be Me that I mentioned in this article, Non-Stop Seeking, with Sarah May.
This piece by my friend (a talented writer) named Juliane Bergmann resonated with me: People-pleasing and extreme self-reliance are two sides of the same coin. Juliane has this way of hitting the nail on the head and saying the uncomfortable. You might also like to check out her Substack, the aptly named Unmentionables.
I watched Tick, Tick... Boom! last week and highly recommend it. You don’t need to know Jonathan Larson’s work to enjoy it but I do recommend you watch RENT beforehand if you’d like greater context for the film. Andrew Garfield’s performance in this film is next-level.