How Should I Spend My Days?

Living with a countdown has changed the question—not “how much can I do?” but “what do I count as living?”

👋 Dear reader,

Some questions haunt us because they’re both ordinary and ultimate. Lately, one such question has followed me everywhere: How should I spend my days?

This essay is my attempt to sit with that question honestly—from the quiet of my poolside mornings to the wild ice of Antarctica—and to share what “making the most of time” has come to mean when time itself feels fragile.

I hope, wherever you are, it nudges you to consider your own answer.

How Should I Spend My Days?

These days, I keep circling a deceptively simple question:

How should I spend them?

By “them,” I mean my days—these small, shimmering pockets of time I’m lucky enough to still call mine.

I live with Stage IV cancer. My doctors no longer speak in decades; they speak in seasons. Time isn’t my friend in the conventional sense—but it has become my most precious companion. Which means how I spend it matters in a way it never did before.

The Quiet Work

Lately, I’ve been home. I write. I sit poolside. Sometimes I read. Sometimes I just… sit. And I love it.

There’s an ease to this rhythm, a quiet expansion I can feel but can’t quite name.

Still, a whisper follows me: Shouldn’t you be doing something more? More ambitious, more productive—something the world might applaud as “making the most of your time”?

The cultural script is clear: when your horizon shortens, you’re supposed to go everywhere, do everything, leave nothing undone.

But I’ve begun to see the flaw in that script. It assumes that “more” is automatically better.

The real question isn’t Am I wasting my time?It’s What do I count as living?

Fruitfulness vs. Productivity

Productivity is easy to measure: trips taken, projects completed, lists crossed off.

But there’s another kind of work: fruitfulness.

It’s the work of coming home to yourself, tending the quiet garden of awareness, deepening your inner world. My hours by the pool, my mornings with the page—they’re not empty. They’re full. Just not in ways you can track on a calendar.

The Pendulum of Adventure

Here’s the paradox: I haven’t given up adventure.

In 2024, I stood among Antarctica’s blue ice, trekked through Patagonia, rafted the Río Baker, wandered the Atacama Desert, and walked the salt flats of Uyuni, Bolivia. In 2025, I crossed into Europe and Scotland. And this August, I’ll set out again for the polar regions: Iceland, Greenland, and the Northwest Passage.

These journeys feed the part of me that still craves scale, distance, and the electricity of the unknown. They are my “go big” moments.

But home matters just as much. Without the quiet, the big trips lose their sharpness. Without the big trips, the quiet feels less rich.

I picture my life now as a pendulum: swinging outward toward the awe-inspiring, then inward toward the intimate and familiar.

Expansion Redefined

When you live with a countdown you can’t see but can feel, expansion takes on a new shape.

It’s not about collecting experiences like stamps. Expansion can mean learning to rest without guilt. Making peace with your own company. Listening long enough to hear your truest thoughts.

Sometimes, expansion is simply refusing to be swept away by other people’s urgency.

So, Am I Wasting My Time?

No. I’m spending it—deliberately—on expansion that happens in the marrow, not just on the map.

When time is short, every choice becomes a statement of values. Mine says: I will not measure my life only in motion. I will measure it in meaning.

The poolside days aren’t a retreat from life. They are my life. And they are the work.

The Reader’s Compass

If you’ve ever wondered whether your quiet days are waste or nourishment, try asking yourself three questions at the end of each week:

1. Did my choices make me feel more like myself—or less?

2. Am I replenishing my energy, my curiosity, my sense of connection?

3. If these were my last months or seasons, would I be content with how I spent them?

Your answers don’t need to convince anyone else. They only need to be true enough for you.

💌 Thank you for reading. If this piece resonates, I’d love to hear how you’re spending your days—and what you count as living.

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Author’s Note: Stage IV cancer has a way of stripping life down to what matters most. For me, that’s writing, traveling when I can, and cultivating honest conversations about how we spend our days. Substack has become a place where I get to share those conversations with you. If you feel moved, I’d love to hear your reflections in the comments—because your days matter just as much as mine.

Every piece I write is an act of paying attention. Thank you for paying attention with me.