Time is Precious

Hello and welcome to Everything with Evan.

For at least the next 10 weeks, this column will give an insight on some of my life experiences and stories from the eyes of a 21-year-old who recently graduated from college.

Let me first say that it is truly an honor to be able to have the opportunity to share a little piece of my life with each of you here. To be able to intern and write for a newspaper I grew up reading is truly a unique opportunity.

One of the things I’ve been asking myself ever since I started my internship here at The News is just where exactly did the time go?

It may seem like a silly question to ask at such a young age, but the reality is that time has felt like it’s progressively moved faster as I’ve gotten older. I remember being a young boy at home wanting to grow older so I could go live in the world the way I had wanted. I was a bit wiser past my years early on in life, learning odd things such as knowing all of the United States presidents…in order. Longtime readers of The News, may recall the story of a young Kindergartner teaching high schoolers a lesson in U.S. history at Piedmont Academy back in 2006. Yep, that was me.

That wisdom propelled me to great academic success throughout my grade school years. A recurring theme, however, would be that I was ready for time to speed up. I wanted to go see the world for myself and live it the way I wanted it to.

I got my first taste of that in college when I moved out of my parents’ house and into a college dorm in Milledgeville. I loved my time there and I really got to see what that personal freedom felt like for the first time. Unfortunately, COVID cut that time short in the dorms, but I later moved back to Milledgeville once school resumed. This allowed me to really branch out from a place I had always lived and allowed me to spread my creative wings.

I’ve always prided myself on my creativity, expressing it in numerous ways throughout my life. In both high school and college, it was in the world of film.

As an independent filmmaker, I’ve worked on numerous film projects in a number of roles from production assistant to director/editor. When I wasn’t doing school work I was constantly working on anything in the realm of creative media. I wanted to speed up time so the world could see what I was truly capable of as a creative innovator.

That all changed, however, when I began to experience a total burn-out. It affected everything from my grades all the way to my relationships with my friends and family. It was then I realized that I had spent too much time focusing on pushing myself to look forward to the future that I never really focused on the present.

I then made a change in my life to focus more on what was happening present day around this time last year. I found that I was much happier than before, and I became more grateful for the many blessings that I currently have today. Those blessings lying primarily with the people I love such as my friends, family and mentors. College may have taught me a lot of valuable lessons, but none more valuable than the appreciation of time.

Even with all of that said, I’m excited to see where I’ll be five years from now. I’d like to believe I have a bright future ahead of me. But I’m beginning to realize that it’s perfectly okay to live in the current moment too. After all whenever I ask myself: Where did the time go? I want to answer it by saying: It was time well spent.