while you're making other plans

Our life is a book to which we add daily, until suddenly we are finished, and then the manuscript is burned. In this diary we set out meaning to write one story, and write another. To turn back to the beginning is only to wonder and to be sad, but to compare the second half of the volume as it is with what we vowed to make it, is to be lashed with nettles.
-J.M. Barrie, The Little Minister