WIAKywbfatw's Journal: Am I letting life pass me by?

Am I letting life pass me by? Have I not made the most of my youth or my opportunities?

(Warning: If at anytime you're feeling bored with what's below, or - ironically - just plain lazy, then console yourself in knowing that following six paragraphs are loosely summed up by my parting sentence. Read on or skip them: it's your decision.)

I ask these rhetorical questions here because I seem to ask myself them with alarming frequency. I've squandered a lot of opportunities through apathy, ignorance and laziness, and I've had a lot more stolen from me as a result of what was at one point a life-threatening illness.

Striking whilst the iron is hot hasn't ever exactly been my forte, thanks to the one-two combination of indolence and sheer bad luck. But I'd like to change that, and I'd like to start changing it now. Yet looking at the past and reliving it is a burden that I can't seem to shake: the ethereal emotional baggage of living with the knowledge of what might have been and what should have been is as much of an obstacle as anything more material. What holds me back is as much mental fortitude as it is physical strength.

When I started writing journal entries I said that I wasn't going to write anything of a personal nature in them, but I guess that that self-imposed rule has, to some extent, now gone out of the window. So, I ask you - well, I ask all two of you that are bothering to read these words that, even as I type them, sound like drivel - just what do you do to get back into the saddle when you feel that life's tossed you out of it?

How do you motivate and empower yourself to achieve your goals when you feel that motivation and empowerment themselves have deserted you? How do you get the will to pick yourself up off the ground when life seems to continually knock you to the ground and then repeatedly kick you when you're down there?

What started this introspection-cum-appeal, was reading a BBC News article about the death of funk singer Rick James, and the sudden death of a close relative, both from heart attacks. The two men had nothing in common (definitely not nine kinds of drugs in their system), apart from the rather salient fact that they both lived life to the full, which is more than anyone would be able to say of me if I were to drop down dead today.

I'm not suicidal or anywhere close to it, but I do want to emulate these men, at least in their full appreciation for life up until their dying breaths. I feel like a runner, in a desperate race against the clock, falling at every hurdle, retarded by life's maybes and should-have-beens, and I want to feel like a runner in full stride and with an open road ahead of him.

What it boils down to is that I want to be Forrest Gump. I really do.

Hat over Fence

[SolemnDragon]

I'd like to preface this by saying that i don't live it up much. I don't have much to live down, either, so it works out oke.

On the other hand, i'm busily getting back into the swing of... something... as you can probably see from my journal.

I guess it comes down to this:

Do what the you whom you'd most like to be- the best, cleverest, coolest version of you- would do.

Practice small acts of change. Get a different drink at a juice bar every day for a week.

Talk to strangers.

Take off your hat to a woman

Re:

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Comment removed based on user account deletion

Regarding phases

[Metropolitan]

I think that a great many folks in their 30s go through this, as I am at the moment. It's the place in a person's life where there's a meaningful amount of experience, the end begins to come in sight (as parents age and pass on, that's really emphasized), and the energy of youth is becoming replaces with more methodical and purpose-driven acts.

You'll get through it. Just a phase. Then, I think, as you look at what you've done and who you are, you'll realize that there's plenty there, and plenty left to