On The End Of Year Existential Panic

It's the final countdown of 2017. Many of us are getting ready to celebrate in various ways. But around this time, right before the time runs out on the year, many of us fall into a strange sort of funk as we get older.

It's a sort of existential panic that revolves around a single question: "What the hell have I done with my time this year?"

In some respects, even if you made good use of the time (and there's a pretty good argument that it's unlikely you didn't - at least for the majority of people) you are not immune to this feeling. In fact, you might be even more susceptible to it.

In a lot of areas of life, and in life in general, there's a strange sort of feeling that time is running out. It starts to nag at the edges of your mind in your twenties and, if you don't address the issue with constant self-reflection and a strong inclination toward self-improvement, it starts to pick up momentum after 30.

But even me, with my stacks of journals filled with thoughts and ideas and my shelves overflowing with philosophy, fiction, and self-development, can find myself suddenly struck with a bolt of this feeling that I really am just doing everything wrong.

Luckily, I know that the feeling will pass. These are opportunities to refocus on the life and the world that we are dedicated to creating. So I've begun to think of these feelings, when they crop up, as little warning signals that I'm wandering out of my lane and off-track and need to re-center on my vision and priorities.

Actually, I've made a lot of progress this year. Whether it's progress by anyone else's standard is irrelevant. I'm happy with it and no one has the right to tell me not to be. Or rather, maybe they do but I've got the right to fully and completely ignore them.

This next year is going to see even more steps forward in my personal space, and in the world in general. I really want those gains to spill over into the lives of my family, friends, and loved ones. But I suppose that's up to them.

Me?

Well, I'll be just fine. That awful feeling is already subsiding after writing this, and I'm sure that by the time the clock strikes midnight my eyes will be firmly, if not soberly, on the future.