Do you ever feel like you’re always holding out for something? Hanging on, swinging from point to point – jungle gym style – and merely existing in between?
Waiting til your partner finds a job.
Waiting til you save $100, or $1000, or $10,000.
Waiting for a job offer.
Waiting for the end of a project, so you can move on.
Waiting for a trip, a concert, a big event.
Waiting for the next big milestone. The next big high.
I’m know I’m guilty of it. I feel like I’m in limbo. The thing I’m waiting on may not even happen. But it wields a strange power over me. It propels to me put things off, to think twice, to say “what if?”
It’s like traversing the rocks down at any rugged beach – leaping, clambering, shuffling – anyway you can, ungainly or graceful, just making your way from one to another, trying our best not to slip and fall in between. The end point, the next cove, is always just around the corner. But those moments of flux shouldn’t be forgotten. I certainly don’t think it’s realistic to live every day like it’s your last, but I don’t want days and weeks and, who knows, even months to slip away. The older I get, the quicker those sands pass through the hourglass. It feels like I’m wheeling out the rubbish bin every other day and buying tampons every other week.
I want to be more present. This means I need to compartmentalise, to not constantly stress about the interviewee I can’t seem to reach for love nor money, to stop wasting time wondering Niue? Rarotonga? Some other island?, to shake up my routine more often with a date night like last night, where dishes, work and to-do lists were put aside entirely for one evening. To enjoy, to savour, to live.
I like this post. I was thinking about this the other day. It’s so easy to get into a comfortable routine, & then it’s hard to even remember what happened last week because it was the same old thing..
One of my favorite quotes is “life is what happens when your busy making plans”. Its true. It’s hard to find a balance.
My life over the past couple of years has been an exercise in the opposite, by which I mean that I’m learning how to hold out, how to plan and prepare, how to save and to delay gratification, to wait for my turn.
Much of this has to do with the fact that I’m married now and have to take another person into consideration, rather than making every decision based on what I want and what’s good for me RIGHT NOW, which is how I lived my life for nearly 30 years.
Word. I spend my entire week waiting for the weekend, but it’s like… there’s a lot of hours in a week! Why don’t I look forward to any of them? Heck, why don’t I enjoy every single one! So I feel ya, my friend, I feel ya.
Your post is beautifully written.
I definitely need more carpe diem in my attitude. Most of my weekdays are spent waiting for Friday and the weekends. When the weekend is over, and it often feels they are over way too fast, I restart the cycle again.
I have heard of a cognitive psychology finding that the older you are, the quicker you experience time. The study found that we reach our perceptual “middle age” by the time we are 9 – i.e. if we measured time by the speed we exeprience it and not the “actual” time, we have already experienced half of our lives by 9! This means that if I want to “get the most” of my life experiences, I have to try harder and not just live in-between weekends and vacations. It takes real efforts to fight the monotomy but in the end I think it’ll be worth it.
This post is clutch! I am so guilty of dreaming my life away and I needed to stop for two seconds and realize I wasn’t living. When you wait for that next “big” thing, that’s time that you aren’t doing something. No matter how trivial.
What snaps me back to reality is usually a meet-up with my mentor. She is a tough love type who tells me every time that I need to stop exerting control over every situation and that I need to start rolling with the punches. She’s also recommended that I go bungee jumping as it might change my perspective on life.
That said, this year, I have vowed to stop waiting and to start doing. Why are you waiting for that next big thing? Why don’t you just go after it? If its not there, take as many steps as possible to bring it closer to you. And when you’ve done all that? Move on to the next one.
My biggest problem is tomorrow because tomorrow is constant and always there. I always think there is enough time because there is always tomorrow. Well, tomorrow never comes. It’s hard to live in the present each and every day without fretting about actions of the past or what the future may or may not bring. Living life as it happens – that’s what I need to work on.
I am learning to be more present in 2011, appreciate the little things and just being happy to be alive and well right now. Who knows what tomorrow holds and why is it so much better than today? I’m learning to act NOW, instead of holding off until tomorrow or the weekend or Monday.
I’ve been coming across a lot of blog posts with topics on life and just simply enjoying the now. I love it, because I always need and appreciate the reminder once and a while to take life as it comes to you.
I hear ya! I sometimes have to talk myself out of the “things will be better/different/change when…” I’m trying to realize that NOW is when things are going to be better. I have to stop waiting for that magic moment because life doesn’t work that way.
ps could you add me to your blogroll?
[…] were times, I admit, that time seemed to be dragging its heels. But mostly, I feel like 2011 shot by like a cheetah on […]