Timing

And on the topic of timing, blog posts will now be up on Sundays every two weeks!

Time is a vital part of everyday life. You need to be on time for your bus and on time for work. You want to be on time for dinner with your family and on time for a first date (eh). We check our phones and watches to keep an eye on the time. Time is money.

When I transferred to Baruch from American a couple of years ago, I took a summer class so I wouldn't "fall behind."It was crucial for me to graduate "on time." After that, I cried when I didn't have an internship by the summer before junior year because I thought I was "falling behind" my super-qualified peers.

When I was 19 and going through my first breakup, I was told that I was "the right person, and it was just the wrong time."

When I started working a job where I was excited to work and innovate, I was told my ideas were "too ahead of their time."

In a lot of facets of my life (and probably yours, too) there have been overwhelming feelings of time "running out." Feelings of being behind the curve and thoughts of being entirely inadequate. Time is, for so many people, everything.

I think talking about time is important. We're living in a world where 12-year-olds make millions being YouTube stars and 75-year-olds win body-building competitions. I sit in college classes with 30-year-olds with husbands and wives and kids. CEOs of successful startups are my age.

Do you think that any of those people look at their clocks and seriously wonder, "Is my time running out?" Maybe there's a sense of urgency to accomplish their goals within certain time frames. But if any of those people took a look at this "societal clock" and let it define their goal-reaching capability, I doubt any of us would know about them.

There are far and few people, those being the ones who understand and reject that timing constraint, who achieve wild success. And I don't mean fame or fortune. I mean success in their everyday life. Happy and satisfied, in whatever way they see it.

I understand the uncertainty. After all, we're told to graduate in 4 years and find the right person "before time runs out" and be in the right job before you turn 25. But how can you be late to your own life? I'll take my real-life examples.

That summer class? It was $1000, and I could have opted to not take it and still graduate in 4 years. Waste of money.

That internship I didn't have? I got one three months later than all my friends did, and it was the best internship of my life.

That breakup with the "right person at the wrong time?" That fool was still the wrong person two years later. As a side plug of my belief, there's no such thing as a "right person at the wrong time." The right person will always be the right person, especially in the worst of times. Okay, done being the mom friend.

That job where my ideas were a little too "ahead of the time?" I quit and a month later they started using them.

Truth be told, time is bullshit. It's relative. To the outside eye, I might seem ahead of the curve, sittin' easy--in reality, I feel like having a mid-life crisis at the tender age of 22. But then I remember that timing, in all its messy ticking and feeling of doom, is unique to each person.

Take my siblings. Neither one of the older ones finished college. One became a model, the other a soldier. One is married with an adorable son. The other is a bachelorette for life--and they're only a couple of years apart. But they're both pretty happy with where they're at!

Take my amazing big with a resume at least a mile long with experience at Six Flags, Viacom, Disney, and HBO--and she's only 23.

Take my mom who ran her first half-marathon at the age of 56 where most of us couldn't run more than two in high school.

Take me, who renounced all relationships in 2020 and found herself dating the sweetest boy a couple of weeks later. Timing was not everything in this case.

My point is simple. You cannot be late to your own life. The time in which you reach milestones should not be compared to the Mike's, Jen's and Tom's of your life. The time in which you achieve a goal is not a competition with your friends. You should work at your own pace, do the thing (whatever the thing is) on your own terms.