via mugley

Every morning I walk from my $50/month parking lot to my work building. The building whose parking costs $135/month; an amount I cannot soberly spend on parking. I don’t mind the nice little walk in the mornings. Especially when the weather is as perfect as it is now. A nice breeze. Clear skies. It’s quite invigorating to be in the open air, getting my body moving after my commute. There is one point in the walk that I always encounter that just makes me a little crazy. No matter how fast or slow I walk, the timing of the stop lights never works in my favor at this one intersection. I’m always about two steps too late to make the light and have to wait until the next time around. This morning when I was walking, I was thinking about recent events in my life and realized this intersection is a metaphor for being in your twenties.

You graduate high school, and everyone acts like it’s the beginning of your adulthood, but really is it? Maybe for some. But for those who decide to get their bachelor’s degree or higher education beyond that, it’s really only the beginning. The beginning of this long waiting game. Because once you graduate college after four years (or longer if you continue on) then you will start your career (hopefully anyway). Then once you start your career, it’s only a little longer until you are really settled and move up the ladder and start making enough money to be comfortable. And then if you live in a metropolitan area, you’ve got to wait a few years, save even more money before you buy a house, which you should have before you start a family. That is if you’re lucky enough to already have found your partner, otherwise you just have to wait some more for the “right” person to come around.

It seems like the time is never right for anything when you are in your twenties. Those who are older, who have been there, look back and tell you not to worry. Life is not a sprint. That it’s all about the journey and not the destination. But why then, do I feel like I’m just a horse, pulling a cart, reaching so hard for that carrot, and it constantly being just beyond my reach? I think this is the dilemma most over-achievers face. In high school, you get straight As, and you get the recognition. Hey you graduated! You’re valedictorian! Here’s your medal! Instant rewards. In life, when you take those extra steps, when you make someone else’s life easier, no one is there to give you a gold star. The rewards will eventually come in, but in that moment you feel like you are putting forth more effort than you receive. People will say that it will all be worth it in the end, just be patient. And I do trust that it will be.

At least it better be. And maybe for my patience it can be chocolate-covered, with sprinkles, and dusted with gold.

It’s funny how life works. We spend all this money on a new iMac, and lately the last thing I want to do is get on it. I boot it up, check new emails, read tweets, glance at my google reader, fret over the number of blogs I should comment on, and walk away. I think if I made a list of things I did throughout the day, fretting would be listed over and over again. Every time I’ve started to read Pride and Prejudice (I started it many many times and did finally finish it a couple years back), I would always laugh at the mother. Oh her nerves. I can most certainly envision myself as her whenever I do become a mother. Worrying myself into a complete mess. Concentrating on the less important things in life, just because my constant worrying has thrown me completely off balance. Here I am, a very happy twenty something with very little to fret over, but yet I still find plenty.

Oh the dishes. Look at this dust. If I dust I will probably have to vacuum. Oh and of course mop. The laundry. My back hurts, I must have broken it. I have to give the dogs a bath again? That will take up at least another half hour out of my day. And then there will be even more laundry. When is the last time I watered the garden? Oh it’s raining. Good that’s done. But then when will we be able to mow the lawn? If making mountains out of mole hills was a legitimate profession, I could be CEO and retire from my millions in stock options.

I even build writing a blog up to enormous proportions. So much that I avoid it at all costs. I’ve stopped creating drafts in an effort to spur my creativity. What in the world would I blog about? I’ve spent my entire week worrying about doing things, leaving little time for anything to get done. Let alone accomplish something worth blogging about.

So you know what? I’m just going to stop this nonsense. For reals. I have a great life. Sometimes, as much as I love my brain and how far it’s brought me, I really wish I could shut it off. It goes on overdrive the majority of the time. I have zero control of the excess junk that jets back and forth into my consciousness, when really spending my thinking power on extra little details keeps me from the things I do want to concentrate on.

This weekend Cale and I took the dogs on a hike up the hill. This specific time the weather was perfect: the rain had washed everything anew. It was fresh and crisp. Really quite perfect. The fresh air cleared my mind, and even through the huffing and puffing up the hill, I felt great. It was pretty hilarious though because once we got to the top of the hill, we were face to face with a herd of about thirty five cattle. No fence or anything between us. Well Maisie, the ferocious little thing she is, thought she could scare them off with incessant barking. This made the cows just more curious, getting really too close for comfort. We eventually got the dogs calmed down and feeling comfortable with our new hiking pals. All I could think was how in the world I forgot my camera. Really it was too bizarre having all these cows staring us down.

photo courtesy of miketembo. Close enough to what we saw.

I brushed any of my worries away and had to laugh. Dang it was a good laugh too.

So how was your weekend? Did you get to refresh? Please tell me I’m not alone in my uncontrollable worrying.