Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about how I want to live, and how I want to die.

During a few evenings at my parents’ house, we’ve been reading stories written by my grandparents. I never knew much about their lives before, but I learned that they pulled a 21-foot trailer to Alaska from Montana with a station wagon, with two small children. They were comfortable through the winter in the trailer that they described as “cozy,” and after all of that, still liked each other enough to create four more children. The way they described that phase of their life together, just made it sound fun.

On the other side of my family, my grandmother was an artist and my grandfather an overlandimg photographer. He overlanded in his converted van “before overlanding was a thing,” as my dad put it.

And here I am, 70 years later, wasting my life on a screen. Here I am, tolerating my kids instead of enjoying them.

I’ve been realizing lately, that how you spend your time is how you spend your life. Or as Mumford and Sons sings, “the way you invest your love, you invest your life.” Or as the Killers sing, “it’s some kind of sin to live your whole life on a ‘might’ve been’,” and these sentiments have really been getting to me lately.

This past year, my husband turned 40 and I turned 32, and neither of us had a very easy time adjusting to our new ages. It’s like the race against the clock really started to pick up intensity, and we had to do something to slow it down. The kids are growing fast, and it’s not as easy to carry them around as it once was.

What a terrifying thought, that these little ones could be getting so big. I keep waiting for the day they’ll fit into their baby clothes again, but instead I find myself buying them bigger and bigger clothes.

I guess all of this is to say, that it’s finally hit us that life is short. It’s finally hit us that we are the examples our children will follow. It’s finally hit us that we don’t want to raise children who don’t know how to laugh or feel free.

I wish I could tie this up in an eloquent and concise way, but I don’t think I can—it’s late, and I’m tired, and it’s better to write something imperfect than nothing at all.

So I’ll put it this way: I want the way I spend my time and spend my life to reflect what I truly love. If you looked at my last few years, you might think I love my phone more than I love engaging with my family, and what a heartbreaking thought that is.

You might think I love being lazy more than I love challenging myself or learning or trying, to do anything.

How pitiful and terrible of a legacy would that be, for my children to inherit?

This urgency is the motive behind any and all future decisions we may make as a family—to ensure that our children grow up knowing that they are our love, to retire the sentiment of, “I almost did, but then I didn’t,” and to build a life that our children are grateful to inherit.