To be

My whole life I had a vision of who I wanted to become.

I had a vision of my future city. My future apartment. My future job.

I spent years falling asleep as I imagined my future life. I used to get through tough days by thinking the word “Boston” in a never ending loop in my head. On my morning runs, I’d imagine the city scape beside me. It was my reason — it was my guide.

And then I did it.

During some of the hardest years of my life, I pushed through and accomplished those things. I did what I had set out to do.

I moved to the city. I found my dream apartment. I got the job.

And it was beautiful. Though I sometimes wish I would have stopped to enjoy it more often, that I would have looked around and thought, “damn, you’re truly living your dream,” I still wouldn’t have it any other way. Because the ups and the downs, the feelings of being lost and then found, the successes and the failures — they were all an important part of the dream. They taught me that you can accomplish whatever you set your mind to. They taught me that attaining your dream is not always butterflies and rainbows — that problems do not leave just because you do. They taught me that the grass isn’t always greener. That it’s not about doing things so you can tell the world you’ve done them, it’s about doing things so you can be the most you, you can be.

It was nothing like I had expected, but everything I needed.

It was beautiful.

I find myself now in a place I’ve never really known.

I moved to the city. I found my dream apartment. I got the job.

On paper, I became who I wanted to become.

And while I have pretty massive career goals to go after still, I don’t have anything right now that is nagging at me like my dream of city life once did. I don’t have anything to imagine while I fall asleep or get me through tougher days. Often, I want one thing one day and a different the next — going back and forth between things I used to want for myself and things I want now. I don’t have an insanely spelled out, clear direction.

But maybe, for me, right now, that’s a good thing.

Maybe attaining my dream was meant to teach me that it’s okay to not always know exactly “what’s next”. That there doesn’t need to be a mountain in front of you at all times — that sometimes it’s more about rolling hills.

Maybe I’m supposed to slow down. Maybe I’m supposed to enjoy the last year of my twenties (wtf?), to work on my mindset, to continue to become the person I want to be, not on paper, but on the inside, where it counts.

Because while I might not know what’s next, I do know how I want to show up. I do know things I want to work on — things I need to work on. I do know who I want to be.

And maybe focusing on who I want to be, rather than what I want to have or have done — is exactly the place I need to be.