facing forward.

Photo by Traci French (Bliss), via Darling Dexter.

I have a problem.

I look backwards.

I don’t mean to.

I know looking back isn’t a good thing. It confuses your present and complicates your perception. Heck, it even turned Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt.
But still I do it.

The past catches my breath at the most surprising of times: in line at the grocery store, driving down the street, in the office restrooms. And no matter where I am, I’m never prepared for the blown away feeling I get, the realization that I’m 23 and not living my dream.

(Forgive me for sounding so cynical, it's just I've had huge expectations for myself since, oh, age 3.)

I realize, of course, how ludicrous this is. My kind and practical parents remind me often of the impracticality of my backward glances. They tell me that I have my whole life ahead of me, that I’m just getting started, that I can’t make mistakes, that I’m lucky to be employed at all. That the decisions I’ve made up until this point have made sense. I know that they are right; really, I do.

And yet…

I don’t want my life to be a waste of time. I don’t want to sit at my desk in my cubicle and long for the arrival of the eighth hour. I don’t want my education to go by the wayside or my dreams to leave me in the dust. I don’t want to read books and essays and stories and think, “I could have written something like that.” Why didn’t I?

Why put my life on hold?

Because of money. Because of marriage. Because of life’s lemons and making lemonade.

So here’s what I’ve discovered: I am where I am.

No backwards, no forwards. Just right here, right now. I’m here. There are dreams to be lived and adventures to be had today.

Even from my cubicle.

I think. Right?