Now that it’s over, even though I’ve been after it this whole time, apparently I carried nothing along, so that I have nothing to show for my time, nothing to hold onto that I can touch and feel and say, this is what I got for it. Only now that it’s over do I feel this way. I can still remember moments while it was still going on, when I would say “this is it” or “I feel good” or “oh wow” so that it is only in hindsight now that I wonder what was gotten, even though all along I would have told you that I was getting it and even exclaimed to you, this is it! Perhaps it is a function of my bad memory that I now feel empty-handed. Or perhaps it is the nature of time to lock anything good in the present whence it passed, so that the present that now finds me writing, which was only a future from the perspective of the past present to which I am referring, is a whole thing in and of itself, that cannot contain any of the goodness from before. I am a banker with a vault. I keep putting funds into the vault only to find that they disappear right away. Time is not like money after all. It doesn’t save. You have to spend it when you’ve got it. Spend it deeply and rightly and well, and don’t expect to remember why you spent it or what you got for it, because at anytime after, when you are thinking like this, and trying to remember what you spent your time doing, in that very moment you will have more time to spend, and you’ll be better off just spending that time, rather than trying to remember how you spent your time before.

Edit: thinking of this in terms of spending time for pleasure and then judging that time spent for output of some material or otherwise utilitarian gain, as opposed to being grateful and thankful for the pleasure you enjoyed.