A zero sum game?

There are 24 hours a day.
There are 3000 calories a day.

Within large or small variations, this is largely true of everyone.

Not.

If you spend three hours in your commute, you have 21 hours.
You could watch TV, play games, read books, travel, exercise, write.
You could watch movies while travelling, read while eating,  walk or cycle to work and combine the commute with exercise.
You still need food.
You still need sleep.

So, you compromise.
You don't read that book because you wanted to watch a rerun of The Office.
You don't hear that podcast because you were tired and groggy and just dozed instead.
You didn't go for a run to get another hour of sleep instead, because you gave up three hours of sleep last night to finish the game.

Everything costs something.

Sure, you could increase time. Be healthier, walk faster. Take a helicopter to work. Eat less, sleep more. Get more energy in each day, get more done. After all, it's not the years in your life, but the life in your years, right?

But that's hard. God, that's so hard.  Such few people can do it, and at most... another 10% out of each day? Another 20?

Or  you could be the average you want to be, doing what you want, because that is what makes it all worthwhile, that is what gives you the best feeling you can get.

Life's too short to burn on pain.
Each day's too short to burn on struggle.

Not? 

Horse Latitudes

Adrift. 

No sense of what comes next. Goals are an abstraction, an intellectual exercise to give just enough meaning to some tasks to stay ticking, but... the one overarching thing, tying it all together? Not so much.

Back then, it was philosophically easier. 'Be better'. Earn more, eat better, experiment, meet girls, buy stuff, work out. Everything was easy because it was all incremental, measurable. Windfalls and gamechanging paradigm shifts were rare but possible windfalls. The steady climb continued. 

Now, it's a zero-sum game. Better in one means worse in another. 

What do you choose, how do you prioritize? 

Maybe ennui is an easy way out, because it sets a low bar. Just survive the day. Makes the work, the commute, tolerable. Seen in the context of what Life was supposed to have been, you'd just step off the train. If there are no goals, there are no failures to reach those goals, and life in survival mode... goes on. 

Where are the grand design plans, the one thing that can tie it all together - work, family, personal, social, financial, societal, self-actualization lodestar destinations?

Is this growing up? A mid-life crisis? 


Waiting. It's hard.