After years of wasting my life, sands of time are slipping away

By David McElroy · January 11, 2026

I’ve always thought I had plenty of time.

No matter what happened to me, I had plenty of time to change things. I had plenty of time to try again. Plenty of time to fix my mistakes.

When I became managing editor of a small daily newspaper while I was still just 21 years old, I thought I was way ahead of schedule. I had plenty of time and I was going to live up to my potential. I was going to do great things.

When I started my own newspaper company in my late 20s, I was pleased with myself. But then my company failed by the time I was 30. But I still had plenty of time.

When I became a political consultant a few years later, I thought I was finally on track. Surely this was where I would make my mark. I was going to be someone important.

Politics led to a high income, but nothing of importance. I wasted 20 years. I ended up divorced. I had nothing to show for my life yet. But I still had plenty of time.

And so things rolled along. I almost married someone who I thought was the love of my life a few years later, but I chose poorly at a critical time. I lost her. But I still had plenty of time.

I could still find my creative purpose. I could still marry the right woman. I could still have loving and happy children. I still had plenty of time.

The years after that seem empty. I quit politics — with nothing to show for 20 years of effort. I was alone and confused and unhappy. But I had time to start all over again. There was plenty of time.

I found love again, but I lost love again. I made a living but never quite found the right purpose. I didn’t make the films I had dreamed of making. I didn’t write the books I had planned to write. I didn’t seem to do much of anything that mattered.

I came up with plans. I tried a few things. I refocused my efforts at times, but then I let things slip away. I was a real estate broker by now. It was nothing but a way to make a living, though. I had no family. I had a dog and cats, but nobody else.

And suddenly, it no longer felt as though I had plenty of time.

I don’t feel old. I’m not quitting. I’m not giving up. But the time seems shorter than it once did. Where was the family I had wanted to build? Where was the wife I wanted to love? Why couldn’t I seem to make a difference in the world?

For the first time in my life, it feels as though time is slipping away. I don’t have all the years to waste that I once seemed to have. I expect to live a long time — decades, not just a few years — but am I finally going to find the love and purpose and meaning that I’ve been expecting?

Maybe I’m in denial, but I do still think I’ll find the things I’ve always needed. I’m more emotionally healthy than I’ve ever been. I’m more clear now than I’ve ever been about what I need to say to the world. I’m more confident than ever that I can change lives — not change the entire world, but at least change a few lives.

But I no longer have unlimited time. The sands are running through that hourglass far too quickly. And the decisions I make — very soon, not years from now — are going to determine whether my remaining life is filled with love and purpose. Or if I’ll waste those years, too.

I love this life far too much to waste what’s left of it. I can’t change some of my past mistakes, but I can change things starting this year — because I no longer have plenty of time.

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If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

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