Rip in Time, 2012 by Joe Roberts
Losing track
Last week, I met a woman who said she planned to stay in LA for only 5 years but ended up staying for 40. She was legally blind and I was helping her find books she wouldn’t end up buying. She just wrote their titles down on a piece of paper. While we moved from aisle to aisle together, I told her I only moved here 6 months ago and how strange it is to not have winter.
‘It’s easy to lose track of time here,’ she said. ‘The weather is so nice. There are no consequences.’
There is no denying how much I love being able to sit outside with my coffee in the sun, in shorts and a t-shirt, every morning at the end of November. This is my first time ‘escaping’ winter. As much as I am enjoying the newness of endless summer, it feels strangely utopian and I am skeptical.
I am afraid of losing track of time. I’ve entered my Intentional Era recently, which means saying ‘no’ more than I’d like to admit but when I say ‘yes’ it feels like a Big Win. Because what I fear more than accidentally losing track of time is looking in the mirror one day at a wrinkled, sagging face, wondering, When did this happen? How did I miss this?
November 2024