Not Loving the Moment

Written 3/24/2011

I woke up this morning feeling how I almost always do, tired. It is so hard to get yourself to crawl out of bed on a cold Minnesota morning. When I finally worked up the courage to leave the warmth, I looked at the clock, 5:15 AM. How depressing. This morning I thought about how two years ago I would NEVER be up at 5:15 AM. I was the early bird of my college house, getting up at 7:00-7:30 to workout.  This morning I stumbled down to the kitchen to cook some eggs, again thinking fondly of my college years and remembering the one time I cooked eggs at 5:30 AM while in college--the only reason I was up early enough to do this, was that I came home from a night out at 5:30 AM. Oh, how life has changed. I often reminisce about the good old college days. Life was so carefree and fun. My reminiscing today got me thinking, how will I look back on my twenties (post college).

Judging by how our twenties are portrayed in the media, we will be looking back at them when we are in our thirties, with the same sort of longing I experience when I look back into my college years. I wonder if this will really be true. Maybe for some. For many the twenties have been great. Many of my friends and past roommates lives have really started to take off. When 30, They might look back at their twenties as an exciting time when they started out their career path, started really living on their own, planned a wedding or even enjoyed the fast pace experience of graduate school. I am nervous for how I will someday reflect on this time of my life. My twenties have been a whirlwind, and not the exciting whirlwind of a fast paced new exciting lifestyle. My whirlwind feels like I am standing still while the rest of the world continues to move around me. I feel stuck.

I often am told by my older (maybe wiser), colleagues, friends and family, that I shouldn't feel this way. I am told that I am SO young still, and I can work for the rest of my life, so I should enjoy this time of little employment responsibility. It is so hard to see it their way. Again, I am stuck while everyone else is moving. How can I enjoy feeling stuck!?