One of my favorite Thoreau quotes is "As if you can kill time without injuring eternity". I quote it often, and in my most recent relationship, I had quoted it in a discussion about why nothing good can come when you're out after about 1am or so. I'd used the Thoreau's wise words to underscore a bigger point as I often think of it in my own head, and that is that you've got to keep hard at it because your career and goals will pass you by unless you're focused and pushing for them.

She'd been worried that she was nearing 30 and wasn't breaking out yet. I sure get that logic and often have felt like I need to hurry up and accomplish. I turned 24 soon after I got to NYC with a bachelor's degree...that put me two years behind where I should be in my own head...and I and set goals in my own head like:

Upon coming back from Lithuania with a completed novel, I'd set my mind that "I want this novel and my next published before 1999" (never happened)... After 9/11, I'd decided "I want to run a fund before 2002 is over" (launched it in October 2002)... When I saw my first boss on Wall Street on CNBC soon after moving here, I'd thought "I want to be on CNBC by 30" (missed it by just a few weeks)... To this day, I think "I want ten million bucks by 40..."

Logic can be "flipped" of course, and you gotta wonder what the hell we all are in such a rush for when you read an article like this:

Artist Paints From Memory, and at 101, It’s Long

Adele Lerner has been painting New York City for about 40 years — not bad for someone who first picked up a brush at age 60.

“Like they say: better late than never,” she said. “What can I tell you? I’m a late bloomer, but I’ve been looking at the city my whole life.”

She says she is still maturing as a painter but benefits from having been a New Yorker for more than a century. For her 60th birthday, her husband, Julius Lerner, bought her a paint-by-numbers set, and encouraged her to keep improving and buying blank canvases. The gift wound up sustaining her through the loneliness after his death 30 years ago.

And this woman and how she's living/lived her life gives an even deeper perspective here:

Mrs. Lerner earned a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from Lehman College at age 83. And several years back, she began borrowing children’s books written in Hebrew from a library and studied to make her bat mitzvah.

This is what Flipping It is all about. I'll leave it in the wise words and smart melodies of the artist, Paul Simon:

Slow down, you move too fast
You've got to make the morning last
Just kickin' down the cobble stones
Looking for fun and feelin' groovy!
(La,la,la,la,la,la, feelin' groovy)

Hello, lamp post, whatcha knowing?
I've come to watch your flowers growing
Ain't ya got no rhymes for me?
Doot-in' doo-doo, feelin' groovy!
(La,la,la,la,la,la, feelin' groovy)

Got no deeds to do, no promises to keep
I'm dappled and drowsy and ready to sleep
Let the morning time drop all its petals on me
Life, I love you, all is groovy!