Is it 2 P.M. already? Ugh. I’ve done nothing today. I woke up, stretched, saw that I had six voice mails, ignored them, showered, ate three waffles, and then felt annoyed that I’m thirty-five and still don’t speak French. Wait, hang on. I didn’t shower. That was yesterday.
I tried to buy some Converse Chuck Taylors online, but I couldn’t choose between gray and obsidian, because I disliked them equally. Then I got distracted by life-hack articles on Medium for ninety minutes. I’m thirty-five! I thought I would’ve purchased cool shoes by now, and been in a movie. My improv-troupe mate Sanjay was in that indie horse movie. He’s crushing it.
My artistic motto is “Always write five hundred words before noon.” My life motto is “Write one best-seller before age thirty-five.” Today I’ve written one word, a text message to Sanjay that just says, “Hey!”—but I didn’t finish it, just like I didn’t finish my Ph.D. in political science or my engagement to Jennifer in my late twenties.
When I think about all the time I frittered away today, it agitates me, and I jump on Wikipedia to look up famous nineteenth-century circuses. Wow, the circus of Pépin and Breschard performed for Thomas Jefferson. God, why did I abandon my doctoral thesis on Jeffersonian democracy?! And why did I waste the past ten minutes staring at a picture of a handsome young Breschard standing by his horse? Perhaps I’m haunted by an aborted academic career and a clock that now says 3:12 P.M.? Maybe.
I was supposed to renew my car registration today. I haven’t opened the Web site. I thought that I would’ve for sure given a TED talk in my thirties on “How to Unleash the Infinite Writer’s Brain.” I haven’t even given a TEDx. Damn, I really wasted the morning and the afternoon and the last ten years.
It’s O.K.! It’s only 3:40 P.M. I can turn this around, and—oh, my God, Benjamin Latrobe was a circus architect for Pépin and Breschard, and he designed the United States Capitol when he was twenty-nine. Twenty-nine! I’m thirty-five! It’s 5 P.M.! Fuck!
Life is strange. When academia didn’t work out, I fantasized about a new career as a famous writer, travelling the world, wearing cool shoes, having deep conversations in French. I’ve never done that. The closest I came was writing half a short story and then celebrating by shouting “bonjour!” to my roommate Felix while making myself a crêpe. Jesus, is it 9 P.M. already? Tuesday flew by. Nope, it’s Sunday. Goddammit.
I honestly thought I would’ve mastered dating and finance and reading Camus in his mother tongue and keeping my house plants alive by now. But I forgot to water my ficus this month, just like I forgot to found, scale, and sell a business while youth was on my side. April went by so fast. Is it May? No, it’s October. This day and this year are officially hosed.
Why does this keep happening? I haven’t gone outside today. I haven’t slept a full night this week. I haven’t practiced my guitar this month. I haven’t said “I love you” to someone romantically in four years. Once, I said, “I love . . . ” to my ex Meredith, but I trailed off, and she said, “You love . . . ?” And I said, “Yeah, I love . . . ‘The Lord of the Rings.’ ” I’ve been rehashing that moment for an hour while rewatching the animated version of “The Two Towers,” from 1978, and not writing. 1978—my birth year. Shit, I’m actually forty-one, not thirty-five. This sucks.
It just frustrates me. Sanjay is a movie star, and he lived in Morocco for an entire year, and I’ve never even eaten at a Moroccan restaurant, and my ficus is dying, and Pépin and Breschard built successful theatres throughout North America, and they had children and wives who loved them before age thirty-five, and I’ll never be a professor or an actor or write a book, and my crêpes are so-so but not restaurant quality, and I still haven’t learned how a Roth I.R.A. can make my money work for me, and Jean Baptiste Breschard could balance on the back of two horses at once while dressed in a full Spanish-lace uniform with silk stockings, and he was even a comedian of sorts, telling jokes right from the backs of his horses, and it’s 12:01 A.M., and I literally just turned forty-two while I was thinking this.
