the Battle of time

Something struck me a few seconds ago.
It compelled me to run back to my hibernating laptop and start writing this very post.
I realised that today was Thursday (already!), which meant that I only have another 3½ days of doing whatever I want all day. Sleeping and waking up whenever I feel tired and energized. This thought left me extremely stressed up and miserable. How am I going to make up for lost time once school starts again?
Granted that we only have another 4 months of school until Summer vacation kicks in, there is still a lot of work (at least on my part), to do before I can kick back and relax. I have mock exams in May, projects to work on before that and numerous tests I have to do well on in between. Before I know it, the Summer is going to pass by like a gust of wind tugging at my scarf in late autumn and a year from now, I'll be taking my mock exams once again, and only a month later- my real finals.
After that I'll be ready to shoot off to university.
My head starts spinning once I think about my future, and I tend to do so- oh every once in a while.
While I rush through all these thoughts, running them through over and over, my mother will console me, as she always does. To get to step 3 I have to pass step 1 and 2. "Why not focus on what's going on NOW?"

These days, people are much too stressed about what will happen in the future, that they tend to forget about what's going on now.
A student will worry about his or her job in the future, forgetting about their studies now.
A woman in her prime years will worry about her tiny grays peering out,that she will forget that she's beautiful just the way she is.
A parent will worry about how fast their child is growing,how to pay for their child's college funds and will miss their early days as adorable pudgy toddlers.
No matter what, we all worry about what will come. That's only human.
But what we need to do every once in a while; is to pull the emergency lever of the accelerating train, take a step back, and realise what we are missing. Maybe the train has been going so fast that, if we hadn't pulled that lever, we would never have seen the beautiful sunset just outside the window.
Maybe you would even have missed this beautiful spring in Japan-->