Kids—and people in general—want to know one thing: that it’s no big deal.

That their grades are no big deal. That the broken toy is no big deal. That death is no big deal. That life is no big deal. That the world goes on and all is well and it’s all okay, that life is life and everyone can and does handle it and the problems, they suck, but in the end they are no big deal.

This is why sick people hate being fawned over. This is why kids hate being petted and cooed at when they are crying. Because people don’t want anything to be catastrophically wrong, but when the chips are down, they need reassurances from those around them that it’s okay, it’s cool, nothing is catastrophically wrong after all, it’s just no big deal.

People go on, love goes on, life goes on. Today is the same as yesterday is the same as tomorrow, predictable and a space on which to paint your being.

That’s what people want to know. That it’s gonna be okay, and that means that it is and is gonna be normal.

Why do so few people seem to understand this?

There are times in life when it can be difficult to face the choices before you. Not just to make the choices, but to face that the choices are actually the choices. If you find yourself putting off key actions or decisions, you may be in denial, rather than merely indecisive.

You don’t want to make the choice because that means having to accept what the options actually are, and if you’re not satisfied with any of them, this can be difficult to do. I know it is for me. You end up kicking the can down the road in the secret hope that while you stall, the list of choices will change.

There can be some usefulness to this strategy—at other times, it might simply be called “patience,” but it becomes maladaptive if patience begins to turn into stagnation and stasis for long periods of time. You only have one life to life, and the clock is ticking relentlessly. It’s patience if it’s a week or a month. It’s denial if it’s a year or a decade. The line is fuzzy, but as with all fuzzy things in life, at some point you have to make the call or you’ll be dead before you take another step.

Momentum is a hard-won thing, and once you’ve lost it, it can be painful to try to earn it back. Some never do.

I hope I’m not among them.

Every now and then it dawns on me just how incredible (one might even say ridiculous) the pace of my life is. Every weekday is an all-out sprint from 6:00 am right through until about midnight.

I used to say this when I was working on my Ph.D. but now, with divorce and single parenting, it’s back to at least that level of intensity. I manage time incredibly well (which is ironic because back in my primary school days I was one of the worst time managers of all time, something teachers routinely commented on), and somehow each day slots together as a result.

The kids are taken care of, fed, and played with (and/or read to) more or less all day, the school dropoffs and pickups happen, shopping gets done, a full-time management job at a hot technology firm gets done and done well, the bills are paid, the car is maintained, and the home is kept clean and steadily improved (see my last post for reflections on the painting that we’ve been doing). Somewhere in all of that, we also manage the extracurriculars—museum visits, martial arts, library trips, play dates, bowling and mini-golf here and there, and so on.

And I also manage to keep my skills relatively current.

But it’s fair to say that there are no free moments. There is no room in my life for anything else right now. Everything is timed to the minute, and when something takes longer than expected or unplanned events occur, evasive maneuvers are required. In general, these work out pretty well, but it can lead to some nights (like tonight) working until the wee hours of the morning.

It’s a good thing that kids grow up, because I doubt I can keep this up beyond about the age of 50. I’ve been blessed with a pretty rock-solid constitution—I rarely get sick, I’m totally functional when I do, I can operate on very little sleep, my moods lean toward the irrationally stable, and I’m good under pressure. In Timex terms, it’s always been true that “I can take a licking and keep on ticking.”

But sadly, I don’t suppose that can last forever. There will come a time when I have to slow down to a “regular” life pace, like most people have—life cordoned off into work time, family time, personal time, and sleep, rather than all of them happening all the time, at once. The amount of time that is available to me when that inevitable “single-tasking only” day arrives will fall precipitously. Instead of having 48-hour days, I’ll be down to 24-hour days.

It’s a little daunting to think about.