Blog #637: Staring at the Door

This week…
I lost two opportunities.

I waited too long…
And screwed-up twice.

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My FIRST screw-up…

I waited too long to use a LOT of pre-paid press releases. The contract to use them had no expiration date. Not true. The company went out of business.

My I-have-forever thinking cost me over $1,500.

My SECOND screw-up…

For the last three years, I’ve added book titles every day to my reading list. Daily, I get an email shining a light on intriguing new books. I read the synopsis of each, and I add the titles that have appeal to my list. When I finish reading a book, I scroll through my list of 700+ books and find my next one.

I accidentally deleted the list.

I kept the list in an email draft folder. Because it was a daily-evolving DRAFT, recovery was not possible once deleted. I knew I needed to find a better way to save the list, but in the three years I kept adding to it, I didn’t make it a priority.

The list is impossible to reconstruct.

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Both blunders are bummers.

Of course, neither will affect my life’s biography…

but each carries a giant warning that could.

Doors always close.

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We think a door will stay open.

And we procrastinate. And wait.

And we procrastinate. And postpone.

And we procrastinate. And drag our feet.

We naively think time is on our side.

And THEN…

The day arrives when procrastination is no longer even an option.

The opportunity has disappeared.

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Doors don’t stay open forever.

My blunders above are super small when looking at life’s bigger picture.

But they hint at what happens when a “go to” option becomes: postpone.

The lands I want to visit.

The treks I want to hike.

The places I want to speak.

The experiences I want to live.

The books I want to write.

The health I want to have.

EACH of those doors will one day SHUT.

It’s good to tattoo that fact onto my brain.

Before they do.

S.

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Note: The photo above was taken on the Shikoku Pilgrimage…a 750-mile walk in Japan. The trail connects 88 Buddhist Temples…walking to one temple after another. This is what I saw walking out of a mountain “jungle” into one of them.