Much to Say, Not Much Time to Say It

Sometimes I feel like I'm bubbling over with stuff to write about. Whether it's a series of experiences here or abroad that add to the overall thrust of this blog, or whether I'm at a sort of crossroads and I need advice, I'm never at a loss for content.

But my problem is that I barely have time to live my life, much less write about it coherently.

Ironically, I have about ten minutes to write this entry about why I have no time to write entries, because it's 12:29pm, and I have a 1:30pm appointment on Avenida Paulista. I have been up since 7:30am working for clients, as well as on pending marketing efforts, and I'm still in pajamas. The phone has been ringing, and I had to run Clancy down to the dog-taxi waiting outside to take him to daycare. I just had to stop this entry to answer three different emails on pending client items, each from a different country. It's now 12:32pm.

Plus, I'm in a marriage that is loving, but needs constant attention. I'm also running an international business, which requires a lot of thankless administrative work on two continents, and in two separate tax jurisdictions. I have bills to pay, invoices to collect on, and a moving target of various unreliable players in the larger logistical puzzle of my life. That means a combination of pressure, cajoling, charming, threatening and cultivating of different people, with different background, in different cultures, for a wide variety of needs I have -- business or personal.

So, life for me isn't simply a rat race, or a dreary routine. It's a sprawling, humming enterprise that is not for any but the fleet of foot, and fingers. I'm also reminded that time is not only a limited resource, it's a diminishing one. I not only turned 40 recently, but like my mother and many of my relatives on her side of the family at this age, the first symptoms of arthritis are beginning to emerge in me. Naturally, they are showing up in my fingers -- the part of this corpus that my whole career hangs on. Not to mention this blog.

I'm circumspect of course, but I'm also trying to be honest with you. I'm up against the clock in more ways than one, and it's not for lack of wanting to blog that my entries are getting thinner in quantity. Believe me. I'm boiling over with stuff. It's just bottlenecked -- and often that means it runs its course in life terms, pre-empting that short window of creative ripeness when it's most satisfying to write about, and most interesting to read.

It's 12:41. I'm late.