“There’s plenty of time for that later”

It’s very easy to fall for the idea that the important things in life can wait. You want to write a book, but you’ll have time for that later, when the kids are in school or when they leave home. You want to have kids, but you’re busy getting your career established and there’ll be plenty of time for that later.

I’ll just stop there because two examples are more than enough. The children example’s a good starting point. My husband and I are luckier than we knew because we met in our 30s. He’s younger and we wanted a family, so we didn’t wait to start trying. And that’s a good thing, because I didn’t know how rapidly fertility starts to decline after the late 20s. I did know it could take two years from the time we started trying and since I was 34 then I didn’t want to put it off. I also knew the odds of complications started to go up after age 35 and the older I was the less energy I’d have to get up at 2:00 a.m. to take care of a baby.

Luckily, we had our daughter when I was 35 and at 37 we discovered we were expecting our second (and last) child. If we had waited even a couple of years the story could have a very different ending. One child instead of two, or none at all. Time moves on and at some point it takes your choices with it.

Which is the point of today’s blog. Not making a choice is a choice in itself. Time goes on and the longer it does, the fewer choices you may have left. Whatever’s important to you in life, don’t believe that you’ll always have time to get to it.

If you want to write, don’t wait. Start today! Sure, you can always learn more craft. Sure, you can always learn more about the business. And honestly, I can attest to the difficulty of writing with pre-school age children in the house, but it’s not impossible.

What else do you really want to do in life? Go back to school? Start today. Time’s going to go on no matter what you do. It might take ten years to finish your degree part-time, but that ten years is going to pass anyway. What you choose today can determine where you are in the future. Exactly where you are today, or that much closer to your goals, it’s a choice.

Likewise, don’t think that because you didn’t do something at 20, or 30, or 40, or 50, that it’s too late and you’ll just have to go without for the rest of your life. You have the rest of your life, so start today!