Clock

"Tell me about a clock you've looked at a Lot. Go. Ten Minutes." Page 155.

My face is getting slightly more wrinkled. My hair line is slowly moving upward. My hair has firecrackers of gray that snap and crackle out of my temples, like the chipmunk from Caddyshack, bouncing up and out blurring the lines between danger and distinguished.

My arms were fat-free in 2007, but they felt like butter at the time. 11% Body fat was too high back then. A scale was my clock, my odometer, my wallet, and my grocery cart.

I look at my face now, my whole head, really and I think of how bad I've looked, how good I've looked, and how great I could look, and the staring at this clock, takes less time, luckily for my heart. Like an insomniac who stares at the digital all night long, worried about being tired in the morning, that's how I was back then, when I was closer to perfect.

Now I'm far from perfect. I have my good days and my bad days. I have days when the jeans fit, and days when I have to wear the 32's and it's kinda ok. It's not ideal, but when I was ideal I was frantic. That's the problem with clocks. Clocks let us know how little we have, not how much, because unlike money, you can't invest time and multiply it. Time is fleeting. Skin wrinkles. Hair washes away, spiraling down the sink, changing into the color of your sweatpants.

And the more time you spend staring at the hourglass, the less time you have to enjoy what remains.