Bart Blog

It is never too late to forget that a thing is impossible. Looking at my life from a distance, I can see that being meek has produced good results, just not spectacular ones. Now that I’ve crossed into the first half of my 40s, some tell me I still have half my life ahead. They forget that diet, exercise, abstinence and sleep (and that is a lot to demand of oneself) all need to fall into place before I can expect a decent statistical shot at a good late life. Statistical, because you never know.

So why do I bitch about my results? Excuse the profanity, but sometimes I can’t find the patience with myself. We think some people are just lucky in life. I am. A lot. Nothing I have came from hard work. My parents weren’t poor, but definitely not wealthy either. Food was always on the table, clothes were good, I had toys, I had time to explore my passions. But I did not. I went to university, I studied, barely, and didn’t party either. In retrospect, getting shitfaced would at least have been a more engaging waste of time. I just existed. Five years of education, and I can maybe recall three days’ worth of that time and attribute it to something.

I have started to believe that this is simply how it goes. That most of the time, this is how time passes, and ends. And yet I feel it is not enough. It’s a strange tension, holding those two things at once. That’s it, and there is more.

I am starting a sabbatical. Three months of pure freedom. Ninety days of testing the premise that I can be a bit more than I have destined myself in my small mind. I am old enough to know that grand ideas will fail and small ideas won’t be engaging. Something in the middle. I just have no idea how. There’s just one thing I will do differently: treat each day as a start. And try, again and again, no matter how wasted the previous day or days have been. The next day is the same gift of a chance.

This is my second sabbatical, by the way.