The Years Are Short

Awhile back, I was in the car with a friend who shared a quote with me she had heard recently: "The days are long, but the years are short."

As I thought through it, I confirmed it in my head. Yep, made sense. How often do I think that this week or day is taking forever, but here I am at the end of November wondering where the heck 2014 went?

It's been several months since she told me this quote and it still has a tendency to really stick in my head, almost when I need to hear it most, for example, days like today. I had been looking forward to today for several weeks. Not only was it game day for my favorite team, we were tailgating, my family would be up, but we were also playing KU, which meant I would get to see many of my friends from high school that I hadn't caught up with in months - especially not all in the same place. To add to that, the weather was darn near perfect today - I truly couldn't have asked for a better day with people that I really love to spend time with (and maybe some good food and drinks here and there, too.) :)

Now, as I'm finally home, and showered, I'm looking around my room. Tomorrow is back to school from Thanksgiving break for three more weeks of the semester. I'm at the point in the semester where I'm extremely ready for my classes to be done. I'm to the point where I now absolutely have to study for the cumulative finals and write the final papers. I have my final presentations and meetings. As I'm looking around my room and the clothes strung everywhere, notebooks and textbooks laying open, and the random array of things that have to be packed tomorrow, I can say that I am not looking forward to tomorrow as much as I was looking forward to today - a bit of a depressing feeling, if you wondered. But.. the years are short.

It doesn't seem like that long ago that I went out with some of the same friends I was with today over Christmas break my senior year of high school and saw a movie that had just been released, called New Year's Eve. If you've never seen it, it's about a bunch of different characters each trying to get somewhere different for their New Year's Eve night. Most of their paths cross somehow, and it's probably a two star movie about second chances and love and kindness and whatever other happy things you can get out of it. The thing I most remember, though is that this was the last movie our group saw together before Brenna died - and it was set specifically for all of these people to be excited about the year 2012. I remember us talking about that year, and how excited we were to graduate, to start college, and for most of us, turn 18.

Now, almost three years later, turning 18, graduating, and starting college seem like the most minor things I could pull from 2012. When I think about it, the days really have been long, but I've almost blinked and those three years were gone - especially after catching up with those same friends today. If I could go back in time, I would tell my 17 year old self this - because what you do in a day matters more than what you do in a year.