At just 49, Bruce Beach was diagnosed with a rare cancer, and in five years, he will probably be dead.
Until he felt its urgency, he never had much time for living. But mortality has given him renewed perspective. In the last two months Bruce has completed a source-to-sea quest down the River Thames in a canoe, and a three-week road trip around Scandinavia and Europe on a vintage motorcycle. He has recently recorded an album with his band, is preparing to play at London's famous 100 Club and, for good measure, has raised money for charity. By his own admission, when he was younger, Bruce was never one for living. "Things just got in the way, like work and bills," he says.


The problem exactly is that it takes a death sentence before most people truly live. I'm hoping I can get all my living done AND work a 9 to 5 and the rest of it AND do it all without getting cancer or AIDS or something to kick my ass and motivate me into living before it's all over.

I'm only 30, but really by most standards and basic math, I'm already close to the halfway point. And it's not like one can go bicycling to Mongolia and climbing mountains when you're 70 or so (I mean I guess you can, but it'll be much harder). The fact is that life is really, really fucking short, especially when you spend a lot of time procrastinating because you assume you have so much time to do it "later on someday." A wise someone said, "live like today is your last day on earth, plan for the future like you'll live to be 100."

This post is directed mostly at myself.