The Life I Kept Postponing

More than six months ago, I found a barista class online.

I saved the post and spent the next few weeks checking their page, comparing other classes, locations and schedules. The class would take half a day for ten days, and I kept thinking: Where do I find ten mornings?

I have a business to run. I have the gym. I have the home construction project. I have priorities.

Eventually, I discussed it with my wife. She simply said, “Go.”

I didn’t.

I postponed it.

The funny thing is, I never wanted to become a barista. I just wanted to make latte art—a flower, a leaf, something beautiful on top of a cup of coffee.

That’s all.

The Piano That Kept Disappearing

Piano was another one. I have wanted to play since around 2014, and I did try.

I practiced here and there. I bought a piano. At one point, I even tried making it simple: ten minutes a day.

Then another priority arrived, and the piano disappeared again.

Not literally. It is still there, sitting in my office. But for more than a decade, something more important always seemed to come along.

During recovery, I realized that maybe I don’t actually need to be able to play the piano. I want three Christmas songs. A few songs for holidays. Two for birthdays. Maybe three to five love songs to sing to my wife.

That’s enough.

It doesn’t have to be beautiful. It’s already beautiful.

Why Am I Playing With LEDs?

Since childhood, I have loved lights, wires and electronics. Long before today’s LEDs, I played with individual red, green and eventually blue diodes. I soldered wires and connected transformers just to make them light up.

Just before hospitalization, that curiosity came back. I wanted to build a little project that synchronizes the lights around my TV with the colors of a movie.

I bought an ESP32, LEDs, a soldering gun and the other things I needed.

Then I caught myself thinking:

I’m 36. I run businesses. Maybe I will become a father soon. Why am I playing with LEDs?

My wife gave me the simpler answer:

“You should do it. It would be fun.”

I used to tell myself that I hadn’t had the chance to do these things.

But that’s not true.

I haven’t got a chance. Not haven’t got a chance. I had plenty of chances.

I kept postponing them.

Not forever. Just until this project was finished. Until things became less busy. Until there was nothing more important waiting.

Somehow, there was always something.

A Year or Two From Now

A year or two from now, I want to look for small evidence.

Can I make a flower on a latte? Can I sit at the piano at Christmas and play two or three songs? Can I bake a muffin or cake for my wife? Did I spend some Sundays soldering LEDs or doing little DIY projects simply because they were fun?

If so, I will know something changed.

For a long time, I treated these things as though they were competing with my real life. There was work to do, a business to run, a house to build, responsibilities to carry.

Those things are part of my life.

But so are these.

Maybe the mistake was waiting for all the important things to be finished before allowing the little things to begin.

Because they will never be finished. There will always be another priority.

These little things aren’t taking time away from my life.

They are enriching it.

A year or two from now, I don’t need to have become a pianist, a barista, a baker or anything else.

I just want to see that some of these things have found their way into my ordinary days.

Then I will know:

I didn’t postpone my life again.

I lived it.

Shaped from my audio journals with the help of an AI assistant.