being intentional about time. nearing fire and existential thoughts

wanted to share something with those of you that are in the middle of the journey or even getting started as someone getting very close to being fired:

i've always known that for me personally, fire comes from a place of anxiety about finances and running out of money. maybe like some of you, money wasn't always easy to come by in life. i wanted to eliminate that anxiety.

and now, while i'm not outrageously wealthy (e.g. fat fire), i have several million dollars and i just don't really worry about money anymore - definitely not in the same way. i check the spreadsheet very infrequently.

what's interesting though is that while i never expected care free nirvana after hitting financial independence, i naively didn't expect what replaced that anxiety to feel so heavy: death.

i have so much i want to do in life and so little time. it's literally impossible to do all of the things i want to do. spend endless amounts of time w/ family, master subjects i'm curious about, take on various projects, travel, learn things, make things, etc.

and i've started to wonder if i just replaced one form of scarcity anxiety with another.

"what if i don't accumulate enough money?" became "what if i don't accumulate enough life?"

the first problem was solvable. the second one isn't.

and even if i did have all of the time in the world, would it make me happy? or would i just find more things i want to do?

maybe the problem is that i'm still trying to optimize. for most of my life i've been trying to expand my options. make more money. learn more things. have more experiences. keep doors open.

but there are thousands of worthwhile ways to spend a life and enough time to seriously pursue only a handful of them.

maybe the next part of life is learning to do something that is actually much harder for me: choose.

choose a small number of things to love deeply and be ok with all of the other things i'll never do. all of the subjects i'll never master, places i'll never see, projects i'll never finish and versions of my life i'll never live.

how much space this is occupying in my brain is kind of wild but also if i take action on the thoughts - i think the take away is to be very intentional about where your time goes regardless of where you are on your journey.

anyway, food for thought. i thought solving the money problem would leave me with fewer existential problems, not better ones.