Today

I am a planner. It seems like I’m almost always looking ten steps ahead to where I’m headed to… sometimes my mind is years ahead of my body. A little visibility can be a good thing, but the problem is that squinting to see too far ahead of where you’re standing can lead to some massive tunnel vision. I have always had a tendency to get into that “tunnel vision” place as I think about everything I want to do, but the problem is that I put those plans in a place that doesn’t exist on any calendar. I am a someday planner.

Not all plans can fit on your calendar at once, so we’ve all got a few somedays that have to wait until there’s room. The problem with being a someday planner is that all of my plans have been in that schedule waiting room. I was always living miles ahead of where I actually was, so the present never seemed like the “right time” for anything– it was just a placeholder until that coveted “someday” finally came. Someday never comes, it just keeps being someday and the harder you squint to see it the further away it seems and the worse your tunnel vision gets.

My life is a work in progress, and I’ve been living it like there’s some magical point when it will be “complete”… that’s when I’d make time for all the somedays I’d kept waiting for so long. Someday, I can take a breath and slow down. Someday, I can make time to be the writer I want to be. Someday, I can see the world. Someday, I can be who I am and be proud of who she is. Someday will be the day I start living.

Somewhere down the road, I got sick of waiting for someday. I stopped and looked down, and realized I had lost sight of where I was because I was too busy chasing the vision of where I might end up. What was on the horizon didn’t seem quite so important anymore, because taking a second to look down at my feet reminded me that I can point them in any direction that I want. What could be in my future doesn’t control me, and when I gave myself the chance to break out of my tunnel, I realized how much I had neglected my present. I wasn’t happy with where I was, and I had spent so much time convincing myself that it would “eventually” get better that I had done absolutely nothing to steer myself into a better direction.

Slowing down is hard. We’re taught that we need to think about how our actions will impact our ever-important “future,” taught we need to have it all figured out when we’re still in the process of learning what there is to figure out. I have been trying to see who I want to become before taking the time to get to know who I am, but I’m finally listening to what she has to say. Sure, there are still some somedays left in my planner, but for now I’m focusing on today: one foot in front of the other. I might not be going as fast as I did flying through my tunnel of somedays, but I’m getting where I’m going no sooner than I have to. Today, I’m focused on today.