Articles

Not Right Now

I talk (whine, whatever) a lot here about things I want and can’t have. The list is actually a pretty short one – fewer than five items, really. But what keeps me from those things is a pretty short list too, and my own name is at the top of that list.

I hate it when people say things like:

  • You are your own worst enemy
  • If you want it bad enough, you’ll make it happen
  • If you’re not getting what you want, your priorities need to change

I hate it mostly because it’s all true. The reasons I don’t have the things on my “short list” are mainly self-imposed restrictions and rules that I’m hell-bent on following mainly because I feel that’s the “right thing to do”. Priorities that I could change, but won’t. And obviously I don’t want any of those short-listed items enough to “make them happen”. The personal cost is too high, or so I perceive it to be.

Some days, I really wish I were that person. That I could just change my priorities, drop everything holding me back or slowing me down, and run get the things I want with wild abandon. But I’m not, and I can’t. So I struggle with things daily, trying to make room in an already full life for just one or three more things that will not fit, no matter how badly I want them to.

This mostly ends up with me feeling defeated and beat-down, resigned to leaving those things on the short list unresolved. I’m tired of trying to shoehorn things in where they don’t fit, fighting all the external things that seem to be actively fighting against my best efforts, and the only thing that keeps me going is one minuscule sliver of hope:

What if these things are meant to happen in the future, instead of “right now”?

Looking back, there are a lot of things in my life I’ve had to wait a lot longer for than I’d have liked. Some of them I even gave up on while I was waiting, resigning myself to the fact that they were never going to happen, and learning to be okay with that. When they finally did, I could see why I needed to wait, how the base was being established during that time period, and how things fell into place how, and more importantly, when, they were supposed to. Like fate, or karma, or magic, or whatever you want to call it. They couldn’t be forced. They had to happen organically, in their time, not mine.

There are a lot of things I’ve wanted and never gotten too, of course. And that’s just life – often for the better (though not always). But maybe I just need to stop trying to force my short list to happen, and resign myself to the fact that if an when those things are supposed to do something, they will. Until then, I need to be patient, and work at building the foundations that need to be in place first. Having a good foundation never hurts, even if nothing is ever built on top.

It’s so annoyingly slow though. Decades, in some cases. *sigh*

I guess only time will tell. Patience is, indeed, a virtue, I suppose.


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