All I Need

For most days, what we need is fairly basic. Sleep, food, water. But what we actually do with our time is so much greater than that. Work, invest, care. There are these characters that plant a seed in your life and grow into something more, into something profoundly meaningful.

The weight of time bears down on me more and more every day. I feel like there are all these important things that I should be doing but for some reason, I am just not doing them. Not writing more, not learning to play the guitar or piano, not volunteering, not working out, not being enough of a person that is growing. I am stagnant. I get up and get what is necessary but I am not really thriving.

I have the energy to thrive but am not. I am a plant that is neither dying nor growing. Just taking in the sun.

And what I keep asking myself every single day: what is it going to take for me to really thrive? How do I get there? Who will stick with me along the way?

I wake up every day with a subtle reminder in my brain that I am on a timer. A time that will eventually run out. And when it does, what will I have left with the world that made it better? And how can I make as much an impact as possible with the limited time counting down?

I heard once on that "Dying is easy. Living is hard." I didn't get it at the time but now I do. Once I became an adult, I felt the pressing need to do something important. Something that mattered. And I don't feel like I am. And I go to bed every day feeling like I wasted another day that I could have done something important. I am 27 and feel like I need to do more. And how has yet to be revealed to me. Or perhaps the when is simply up to me to decide to do it.

My mom tells me that having me was her greatest accomplishment, that my searching for something more won't necessarily yield some profound revelation. I want to disagree with her. I want children to be one of my accomplishments. I don't want them to be my primary accomplishment. I want them to be one of many.

My friend Liz and I recently decided that knowing where you don't want to be in ten years is just as important if not more so than knowing where you want to be in that time. I don't want to be living alone. I don't want to not have another degree under my belt. I don't want to be wasting time. I don't want to feel like I have empty time waiting to be filled by something important. I don't want my family to wonder if I will ever amount to something more than what I am. I don't want to have compromised on what really matters. I don't want to have not made an impact on people.

There are moments in life where your path is so clear. And then that moment fades and the life you have created is all around you. And you can easily forget that path that was so clear to you in that moment. I remember in college when I was voted as one of a few people most likely to publish something. I remember every time someone makes a comment like "maybe after you publish your first book." I remember every time someone looks me in the face with eyes that say "you could be more." And I don't want to let those people down, mostly because I know they are fucking right. They are so right.

You know those moments in a movie when the perfect happy song comes on, and someone is driving down a road with the wind in their hair, and nothing but the open road of possibilities in front of them? I wake up every day feeling like that person and ending the day feeling like I haven't gone anywhere. I am so sick of it. I have a sense of purpose. I just wish I could find the road to take me there.

Katy Perrty sings "maybe a reason why all the doors are closed, so you could open one that leads you to the perfect road."

I hear that song and know she's right. I am just trying to find my right door that will lead me down my perfect road.