Even my coffee cup wants to know...

I’m leaving Chicago in 3 days. I’ll be starting over in a new country in a week. I’ve been a mix of nervous, anxious and moody. I tend to overthink everything now, in reaction to my pending departure. I went from “who knows if I’ll come back” to “I’ll be here in May”.  Its just easier when the ground is pulled from under your feet that you hold on to something. I’m holding on to May, for practical reasons. If I want to start grad school, I’ll need time to apply for 2011. But I’m also clinging to May because its easier to comprehend. It gives me a preliminary goal, something I can understand. And when I tell people May, they can understand it too, so it doesn’t feel so far away. Time is only understood measured.

Like most people, I’ve measured my life in terms of relative achievements and goals. Not having a defined goal makes your life harder to quantify. Without a relative destination, where am I? I would love to say I have a plan for my life. That way I could at least know where I was at right now in relation.  And that is exactly my problem. Constantly looking for an answer to help define myself. It gets exhausting. I have to stop living in the future. Because regardless of how I will remember this era, It doesn’t matter. I have to be focused on living it right now.

I remind myself to think of the present. I refocus from trying to comprehend some wider unknown goal, to focus on what is right in front of me. I become calmer and more aware. This does not mean I lack objectives, it just means I let them develop naturally. I don’t make goals to make me feel better, I make goals because I truly want to achieve them. This thought makes me relax a bit, my face softens. It will come to me. I know it will.