Time.
Losing time has always been my biggest fear.
When you live with chronic illness, time doesn’t feel abstract. It feels fragile. Limited. Unpredictable.
Because there’s always that quiet question in the back of your mind:
What if tomorrow I don’t have the stamina… or worse, the physical or mental ability… to do the thing I want so badly to do today?
That fear used to control me.
I was the definition of living for the moment—but not in the romantic, carefree way people imagine.
It was urgency.
It was pressure.
It was reckless abandon fueled by the fear of losing time.
So I rushed.
I filled my life to the brim. I said yes to everything. I moved fast, constantly chasing experiences, trying to squeeze every drop out of the present before it disappeared.
And the truth?
I was doing so much… but rarely fully experiencing any of it.
Slowing Down Didn’t Steal My Life—It Gave It Back
Somewhere along the way, things shifted.
My trips got slower.
My days got quieter.
My expectations softened.
And somehow, my life became fuller.
I still travel. I still chase fun and adventure. But now, I leave space—space to breathe, to notice, to actually feel what’s happening while it’s happening.
For the first time, I’m not rushing through moments in the name of creating memories.
I’m actually living them.
The Lie of Urgency
I used to think urgency meant intention.
If my schedule was packed, if I was constantly moving, constantly doing—then I must be living life to the fullest… right?
But urgency doesn’t create presence.
It creates reactivity.
It pushes you into rushed decisions, scattered thoughts, and moments that blur together.
It even shows up in the way we love.
Urgency will keep you in the wrong relationships—clinging to what isn’t right because you’re scared of starting over… and angry at the time you can’t get back.
Slowing down taught me something I didn’t expect:
You don’t build a meaningful life in the big, rushed moments.
You build it in the quiet ones you almost overlook.
What Actually Makes a Life Feel Full
It’s not the packed itinerary.
It’s not the constant motion.
It’s not racing from one thing to the next because you’re afraid of running out of time.
It’s this:
A cup of iced coffee on a water taxi, the breeze catching your hair as you move between places you don’t feel rushed to get to.
Laughing with your roommate until you’re crying, with no reason other than the moment itself.
The “Joke of the Day” TikToks your seven-year-old goddaughter insists on making with you every single night.
Messing around with your lifting buddies between sets, laughing more than you’re lifting.
Stopping by your mom’s house for “just a minute” that turns into a hug you didn’t realize you needed.
A random text from your dad that makes you laugh out loud.
This Is What Time Is Made Of
Those are the moments that make up a life.
Not the rushed ones.
Not the ones driven by fear.
The slow ones.
The intentional ones.
The ones where you’re fully there.
Because the truth is—time was never something we could control.
Not before chronic illness.
Not after.
But what we can control is how we move through it.
And that includes the places we choose to stay.
The conversations we keep having.
The relationships we keep holding onto.
The lives we convince ourselves we don’t have time to rebuild.
Because I’m finally learning this too:
You don’t get more time by clinging to what isn’t right.
You just lose more of it.
And I’m done living like time is something I have to chase or fight to keep.
I want to be present in it.
Intentional with it.
Honest about where I’m spending it.
Because you don’t honor time by racing against it.
You honor it by choosing—again and again—to fully live inside of it.
XO,
Samantha Jo