I would not consider myself a perfectionist. I can’t even remember the last time I kept my room clean for longer than a couple of days. I go to school every day and forget at least one assignment of homework. Someone can criticize my outfit, and I don’t have a care in the world. I am unbothered by my bad habits, such as eating unhealthy foods or having a bad sleep schedule. 

I do, however, try to control my day from the time I wake up to when I go to sleep. Every minute was strategically planned in my head the night before. Constantly planning my week like it were a list of groceries. What I’m going to wear, setting it out next to my bed before I go to sleep. Choosing where I am going to eat during lunch with friends. Knowing exactly what exercises I am going to do at the gym. Of course, setting time out for school work. 

I try to fit in everything I can in a day. “Seize the day,” someone once said. My schedule doesn’t let me sleep in. As soon as I wake up, I can’t fall back asleep, no time can be wasted, especially if it was a sunny day. I want it to be perfect. When plans change or something gets cancelled, it throws off everything. Always being self-critical and wanting to constantly improve in many aspects of my life doesn’t create the healthiest of relationships with myself. 

I do not know fully why my mind does this. Why do I have to try to fit everything in? I could always sacrifice things such as my sport or hobbies, but I don’t want to. I’m not a quitter, and I’m determined to be who I imagine I can be. 

I have experienced seventeen years of life, with hopefully many more left. I have many goals for myself in any given year. Any day, I have a clear understanding of what I will be doing. I want to stay in shape, achieve nearly perfect grades, excel at the sports I play, and improve at the hobbies I enjoy, whether it’s skating or playing the guitar. Everything takes time and practice, and I always want to do a little bit every day.

There are 12 months in a year. The months become weeks when I’m constantly overwhelmed with too much going on. Only able to think about the next seven days. What is due for all my classes, having a test on two tests on Thursday and one on Friday. Six assignments are scattered throughout my courses. With one big project due months from now. That’s just for school. I work three times a week and play sports almost every day after school. As for my personal goals, I’m trying to make enough money for college, go to the gym every day, and fit in time for my family and friends. I could sacrifice these things, but a little bit every day, for anything I do, is how I meet my goals, so I have to find the time. 

There are seven days in a week. On an average weekday, I want everything on my list to be done. I always focus on how I can be as efficient as possible. My mother and I have this in common, and it is partially why we stress each other out. 

We both have calendars in our brains. 

Somewhere in my youth upbringing, I inherited this trait from her. Each day, we have to sacrifice our plans for something one of us needs. Every Tuesday and Thursday during my free periods in school, she thinks it’s the perfect time each week to schedule something for me to do, even if in my head I already have that slot of time booked out in my week. My weekdays are booked, whether it’s the last week of school or a random week in December. Therefore, I put everything into my weekends. The days that are normally supposed to be a rest, I constantly move back and forth from friends to important calls for my future. 

This way of organizing life is fragile. There are always things that happen unexpectedly. Last Wednesday, I was planning to finish a large project for class once I got home, but my dad told me that day that he needed help moving in a new refrigerator. Something so small, taking an hour of my time, can exponentially affect my schedule. I have to find a new time slot for that project, even if it’s due in the next couple of days. This is one of my biggest sources of stress for me.

There are 24 hours in a day, eight of which are spent sleeping. Seven hours spent at school. Three hours spent on work and on my sport, or going to the gym. That leaves three hours for my day to do everything else. These are the magic hours. Where I can get done with homework, play guitar, hang out with friends and family, and anything else my parents need from me. 

I always think I have more magic hours than I do. What is supposed to be the time to lie back, be impulsive, and truly be alive is always booked. It is also what is always sacrificed in my day. Things that I feel are very important for my future goals are less important than the email I need to send to my teacher asking about a reference for a job. I always become jealous of impulsive people. How can they wake up and say, “I want to go to Six Flags today,” out of nowhere? When I do have free time, I worry more that I should be doing something, rather than taking a break. Recently, I went to the beach with my friends during my magic hours. Although I had a ton of fun and created memories that I will remember for the rest of my life, I was still worried about what job I could get for the summer. 

There’s a constant issue with how I want my schedule to look: my phone. Every Sunday at around twelve in the afternoon, my phone sends me a notification saying, “You have averaged 4 hours of screen time a day.” My brain doesn’t factor these wasted hours into my day. I leave wondering, where did all the time go? Why do I keep crossing off things that I planned to do that day? The content I watch for an hour on Instagram is forgotten within the next five minutes, so why would I continue to go on it day after day?

There are sixty minutes in an hour, and they disappear as I wait for those last five

minutes of class, even if I didn’t finish that last question on my paper. And when I sit in unplanned traffic for an extra fifteen minutes as I go to work. Or when I wait for ten minutes to use a machine at the gym. Those minutes I spend waiting or thinking of the future leave me slipping away from the moment. These moments could be a break, but since I’m so concerned with finishing, they are wasted. If I could add up all the wasted minutes in my day, maybe I could get done with everything on my list. 

There are sixty seconds in a minute, and as minutes slip away, seconds fall faster than I can blink. Nobody really thinks about where you are in terms of seconds, but it is the closest measure of time to now. It is never what I am concerned about in terms of my overall plans for the day, or week, or year, because it is not my future. It seems meaningless compared to my stressors and conflicts in my life. 

 This system is a survival method. A way that I can make sense of our chaotic world. In a broader sense, it has brought me to where I am today. I am a straight-A student, a varsity player for two sports, going to college for a career I like while having money in my pocket at all times and family and friends that I love. 

Although I tend to forget about my successes, I still think this method has allowed me to survive, and at times, thrive, but not live. As a fourteen-year-old kid in my sophomore year, I was worrying about student loans. Comparing myself to a 16-year-old pro soccer player in Europe with millions of dollars when I’m their age. When I walk into a room, I feel like everyone is more put together than I am. It can be depressing. How can I be working so hard every day and not be like them? Every once in a while, there are times when I live in the moment. Last summer, I went on a backpacking trip in the middle of nowhere. I had no connection to the outside world. I didn’t care about college, I didn’t care about sports, I didn’t care about broken relationships. I was focused on the beauty that this world has to offer. I was at peace, which is what I try so desperately to find. 

While I can survive with my stressful system, the times that I live in the moment are what make me care about life enough to want to survive. These moments are too rare in my life. In the future, I do need to find a new way of living, but I have never seen anything else. As I am about to begin my college career, I have noticed that each year I have gotten better at managing my time. Seeing what I can and can’t do on a given day through trial and error. Junior year was one big error, trying to fit in too much in my life, and senior year was learning from my mistakes and figuring out what I truly want to focus on. My system is not perfect, although every ounce in me wants it to be. I still see improvements in my goals, some smaller than others. I continue to learn to be okay with failing and not meeting my high expectations. Realizing that life is shorter than you think, you want to make the most of it, as I try to do every day. I know where I am going to be next year. I know what I am doing next month. I especially know what my schedule is next week, and the days that follow. But when it comes to each particular hour, and every minute in that hour, and every second in that minute, I lose my value on time as I am so caught up in the future.