> Live every day like it could be your last.

I've apparently been doing this, and you know? I'm thinking it's not going to work out.

If I followed those words to the letter, literally believing that I was going to die of a heart attack at any moment, I would go insane.

Maybe I am going insane, then.

There are a lot of things we take for granted. Sure. I'm incredibly grateful to have both my hands, because if I lost even one of them then I would be severely impacted in my work. I could end up having to take a pay cut or lose my job outright. And I might never be able to draw at the level I could accomplish by still having hands.

But I believe there's a reason we take these things for granted, with the side effect in a lot of people of never understanding their importance until it's too late. We do so because if we didn't take anything for granted, we would spend all of the time thinking about what would happen if we suddenly lost body part X or Y, and become constantly aware of every single tendon and muscle in our body and how they were still functional as opposed to dead, and never get anything done. Or at least greatly reduce our mental capacity to think about the important things we want to accomplish with those limbs instead of spending it on fruitless worry.

So I have to both understand that yes, it would be horrible if I lost my hands or ability to walk or my sight or my hearing or my life, and then I have to put it out of my mind and do what I want to do while there's still time instead of worrying about it every single day.

And even thinking like that becomes counterproductive.

I'm 24 and have had this bizzarre chest pain. I went to the doctor and the ER several times for it. Dozens of times. Nothing came of it. Not even a diagnosis of pleurisy, or a diagnosis of anything at all. It was just unresolved and I have to assume it's something in the realm of anxiety or hypochondria. And it still hurts in the most inconvenient moments and is a constant hovering reminder of my own mortality.

So now it's 3 in the morning and I need to write this thing. I know I'm only killing myself by failing to fall asleep at 3 in the morning but I don't know if I'm going to be alive tomorrow and I need to get this out there. Need someone to know that before I died that yes, I had thought enough to think of this thing, this concept that nobody else I've ever met has thought of, that nobody else will ever think and if I'm going to die tomorrow there will never be anyone else that will think of it again. So I need to do this, to write this down and move my still functioning fingers and joints over the keys to just get it out, need to finish this before I die because I don't take my own impending death for granted and I was smart enough to realize that fact, so use it. And oh, there's that other thing, that programming project I've spent years on committing to master alone and intend to spend several more years on. If I die that project will never be finished because nobody else cares enough. Sure, someone else realizing I died somehow and telling the community that I intended to finish it but never could because instead I happened to die, out of my control, could motivate someone else to take up the flag. Or not, and as a result the planet overheats 100 years from now without that one thing I wanted to accomplish with my life ever becoming reality. What could possibly be worse for the psyche of human accomplishment, of redefining the status quo, when you're trapped in this box of failing hearts and endless anxiety and just couldn't do it so that's just the end of it all? That's the end of the dream? What else is there to lose?

No.

Not going to happen.

So now it's seven in the morning.

And I've failed to get any sleep and failed to eat anything so I'm starving and physically exhausted and my heart is racing and it feels like it's being shoved against my lungs and ribcage and I feel that much closer to dying than before.

Then I try and fail to go to sleep since apparently I'm not mentally exhausted yet and go on HN and discover this person formerly a part of Mythbusters is dead of a brain aneurysm at 49, and then I remember that wowaka, the world famous Vocaloid artist, probably one of if not the single most popular Vocaloid artist of all time, died of heart failure at the age of 31, 31 years old for fuck's sake and that means I only have 7 years left if it really comes to the worst possible scenario with my health that me never getting any sleep and worrying about dying all of the time every single day of the past year is not doing any favors. And now it feels like my heart is going to explode inside my chest from remembering this, remembering wowaka and Rolling Girl and dying of heart failure in 7 years at the worst possible time because this important person died tragically and everyone considers 49 to be young, 49 is young, right, and my heart hurts so much it feels like it's being squeezed with a belt, and

You get the idea.