I think that when I was younger all that mattered was doing a good job. As I grew older, I wondered if I was missing something. I don’t mean promotions or salary raises. I thought of Time, that forever deal that no one gets to turn away from. I lie to my side at night and, before I go to sleep, I hear my heart beating under me. I wonder why I feel it more keenly now. I think of the day I finally stop trying to sleep and die. I wonder if everything I’ve done since would have been worth it, even just for me.

The strife of overtime is more than just about money, or boredom, or even health, or all the bad reasons why we burn Time this way. Rising onto the surface is waste: Life wasted on things I don’t love; on vanity, on mediocrity, on lusts, on fear.

I love differently, I love different things, as I bear Time. Now, the world has become unintelligible and malicious, and I feel as though I am being born yet again unto myself, coming out of a mystical womb with hysterical infantile cries that I myself don’t hear. The pain of a rebellious newborn — never known — is now remembered; dissidence grows desperately, yearning never to die with an old heart.

If ever I run free, in the present I will live, and all my moments will be as aeons are: more Time than I can ever hope to ask for.