So much to do..

As November approaches, and dare I say the C word, Christmas, I struggle to comprehend just how fast this year has gone. It sounds like a bit of a cliché but in all honesty, I actually don’t know where this year has gone. It’s so easy to forget that with each passing day, weeks are rolling into months, and those into years. The idea that we have all the time in the world to fulfil our dreams becomes all the more unrealistic but often there is so much we want to accomplish. I can’t speak for everyone but personally in each different area of my life I have things I want to achieve but finding the time to manage each one can be difficult, yet if we don’t, we may find ourselves later in life wondering why we haven’t done all the things we wanted to do.

I suppose the first one that comes to mind is our professional lives. We all need a salary in order to live (unless you have won the lotto, another activity I am pursuing!) but in most cases we all have to work. I used to think that the title I had was important but I realised that it’s far more beneficial to be content at work and to have a healthy balance between life and career. Sometimes, I still find myself comparing my achievements to others but I’m slowly realising that what we see on social media are, more often than not, only the high points in people’s lives. From time to time people will ask me if I’m working in the industry that I studied for in University and truthfully, I’m not. I studied New Media and English and then went on to study Public Relations both with one subtle driving force in mind, I want to write. I have dipped in and out of jobs that incorporated this but for various reasons I’m now somewhere completely different. It has been a blessing but I still want to write so that is what I plan to do. To be a published author would be the dream but it takes a lot of time and commitment and often, a lot of rejection but I’ll keep striving for it, one step at a time.

Then there is our own personal goals, writing blends into this category for me as well as the professional one but there are many others. I used to be very fit and exercised a lot. I did everything from athletics to swimming to camogie to dance and that has now faded into just walking and yoga. I definitely want to find more time to improve my fitness but it’s another thing to fit in. Travel, I have so many places in the world I want to see and making this a priority is something I need to look at too. At the moment, I have no desire to live abroad again but I do still long to see more of the world. Time and financial planning needs to be factored in but when you are trying to manage living in the now and saving for the future it can often be put on the back burner.

If we then dive further into our personal lives there is relationships, friendships and family to spend time with. Often, people will have different circles of friends. Some will be from childhood, some from work, some from college and so on and finding time to spend with each other only gets more tricky as we get older.Whether we are single or in a relationship plays a part also, we need to spend time with partners or find time to date. Then there is family relationships which shouldn’t be neglected either although sometimes they are and just to add something else to the mix, we all need some time to ourselves to just be. We need to relax and to re-cooperate. I think it’s important to know how to be in our own company and to know how to be content in that company but more often than not we put ourselves to the end of the priorities list!

There is no denying that time is valuable and the older we get the faster it seems to be passing. While we need to be aware of it and not constantly putting off doing things there is also sometimes in life where unforeseen experiences come our way. We may think we are heading down one road but something completely unexpected could bring us on a very different journey. I guess that’s just life. Society and peers can put a lot of pressure on us to reach certain milestones at certain times and it can be overwhelming but I think the best approach to take is try to find a balance. Balance time as best as you can to fit in the different aims and goals you have in all areas, but also remember that life will throw you plenty of swings and roundabouts in the meantime and we just have to take the turn offs we think are best!