Chasing the years of my life

I'm fifteen for a moment
Caught in between ten and twenty
And I'm just dreaming
Counting the ways to where you are 
I'm twenty two for a moment
She feels better than ever
And we're on fire
Making our way back from Mars 

And on the song goes…thirty three for a moment; forty five for a moment; another blink of an eye sixty seven is gone; ninety nine for a moment…

When I’m with my girlfriends I’ve known since junior high and high school, I still feel 17 in my brain. I rarely physically feel 23 anymore, particularly after a night of drinking, but still, it seems like it was just yesterday. Wasn’t my 30^th birthday last week? A few times recently I’ve gone to look for a photo in my snapfish online albums only to realize that event took place five years ago, not last year.

Everything goes so quickly, and sometimes that makes me feel melancholy. Mostly it serves as a reminder to open my eyes and look at the sky, to say screw the chores and finish the book instead, to linger over flowers instead of speed walking by them, to appreciate the places I find myself, and to focus on the people I’m sitting next to in those places. To be in the moment, to get off of my phone unless it’s to put something on Instagram (it’s called INSTA for a reason, you hear? Just kidding, not really). You know what I mean. To be there.

Source

Every once in a while I’m sort of startled by the fact that I’m 36, which prompts a gut check. An introspection session. How did I get here? What am I doing? Am I where I thought I would be?

The answer to that is no.

I was not ever interested in getting married, but it was important to a charming man who is important to me. I always thought I’d work on a college campus, and instead I’ve spent the past 14 years building a career in communications and marketing – a career full of great coworkers, bosses, opportunities, lessons, and successes – and I actually like what I do. In my early 20s I couldn't even make a good grilled cheese sandwich and didn’t care about anything domestic, and now I really love being in the kitchen and keeping a nice home. I never thought I’d have dogs that I treated like human family members. So many things are different than I thought they would be when I was 15, 18, even 21. I've taken roads I didn't think I'd take. When I took the wrong roads I beat a path through the underbrush and emerged onto another road with cuts and bruises from the journey. But I did emerge. 

So no, I’m not where I thought I’d be. I think I'm somewhere better than I imagined. My life is not even close to perfect. There are still a lot of changes to make in myself, in my relationships and in my environment. I am responsible for my own happiness. I will always be in a state of flux: constantly improving myself and my surroundings, inviting friends old and new to sit at my table, eradicating people and things that affect me negatively, tweaking my ways, learning, growing, changing, revising as I go. But most days, I truly like my life as it is. I'm grateful for everything. I could literally weep with joy at the quality of the people surrounding me. I'm proud of the life I've built for myself. And that is really a wonderful thing, to take stock of your life and to be content.