How Tos and What Ifs

I find my thoughts these days are confined to self-improvement. It may not be that I am in such a desperate shape that I need to be so much better, but most days, most hours, most minutes, I don't feel I'm quite enough.  I see myself as someone with potential, but the possibility of being is not the same as being.

But my self-improvement kick lacks focus, oscillating between figuring out how to change the world and how to love, how to stay in touch and how to stay alive.  None seem so impossible on their own: changing the world with words, rants and research; loving with a full heart and a generous hand; staying in touch with coffee dates, lunches, drinks and phone calls, maybe a Facebook post or a text message for good measure; staying alive one night's sleep followed by one morning's coffee on one month's paycheck.

Then there's a moment once in a while when they all seem to be happening at once, and they feel as though they need to be happening faster because God forbid I don't become successful, become something that fits into a pretty paragraph-long biography below my name on a glossy page.

Time, an arbitrary measure of life sloppily understood as meaningful, feels as though it's running out.  But there is no clock.  There are no universal seconds ticking away, and I'm not losing anything as each moment fades into the next except maybe a bit of sleep. There should no rush because there is no imminent pendulum ready to strike if we don't decide quickly enough (except maybe a glaringly low bank account balance, but let's put numbers away for a moment).  I have only imaginative constructs of what I see, what I remember, and what I hope comes to pass.  (When all's done and said, it's all in my head.)