Many the miles: how far we've come.

I finally got around to the purging and organizing I mentioned earlier this week.  And it's official. I was a better grown up when I was 22. I had my suspicions.  The well-organized "Taxes" folder from 2007 confirms it.  Back then I kept personal files, balanced my checkbook (in a checkbook), and regularly wrote letters to friends - just because. And had a salary at a stable job.

But I was stagnant.  Stagnant at 22 feels like . . . feels like running on a treadmill.  You are exerting all of this energy moving and breathing and sweating, but you are going nowhere, looking at the same spot on the wall, and thinking nonstop.  You know it's for a good cause, but at the same time you are slowly becoming more annoyed, reaching the point of insanity for running and running and getting nowhere.  It's exhausting.

I understand that some people don't feel the same way I do about that, though.

Another analogy: Stagnant at 22 feels like a 3-year-old must feel when she's put in timeout.  It feels like a tragedy, like the worst thing that could have happened, as if you'll be stuck in this spot for the rest of your life! It feels like that. Only you put yourself in timeout.  And you can make choices to get out of that corner.

I wasn't actually miserable.  It certainly wasn't a real tragedy.  But I wasn't exactly happy either.  And then I met a lady at my apartment complex's pool.  She was visiting her son who was in school at UT. She was one of those over-sharers.  I don't remember everything she said to me, but I do remember this:

Her hope for her son was that he would wait to settle down with a job and a family so that he could see the world.  Her one regret is that she didn't travel when she was young - that she didn't do all the things she had wanted to do.

About 9 months later I quit my job and went on this crazy, tear-filled, wrinkle-producing, amazing journey that has brought me to this moment, less than 3 weeks away from India. I'm more comfortable in my own skin.  I know that this next step is the right one for me.  I know that there's a lot that I don't know - I most certainly don't know what my life has in store for me - but I'm ok with that (most days).  I know there are a lot more things out there that I want/need/just-have-to-do.  I am more aware of what I want.  Progress has been made.

Progress doesn't always look like what you think it will.


"Send me the miles, and I'll be happy to follow you." Love. (And the sunsets, oh the sunsets.)

(I think I will start writing more letters again.)