Decide & Do
It seems we are all slotted into a certain category early on in life, and we spend the rest of our lives trying to break free from that box. Because honestly, who likes to be boxed in?
I can no longer be considered a “young adult,” according to the definition offered by the Oxford Dictionary, but I’m still struggling with more than I’m proud to say at this stage of my life. Thirty is staring me in the face, and there is so much that I don’t have a grip on.
I naively created a 30 before 30 list when I was living in the Buies Creek bubble. We didn’t have much money, but I had all the time in the world to dream up dreams and explore my wants. Just two years later, that list would look a lot different.
The fact is, I didn’t think I’d still be in the figuring it out phase of my life at this point. Everything in our lives right now is transitory. I craved the escape from The Football Life to squash the feelings of impermanence, but it turns out the permanent is up to you.
And that’s where the decision fatigue sets in. What do you want people ask, and now the answer has to be much more practical, not a childhood fantasy of wishes. And while my wants are simple, the mistakes that litter our path seem impossible to surmount.
It’s in moments like these when the desire to make radical changes reminds me that everything starts with just one step at a time.
I’m standing on Start, spinning in a circle, incapable of making the choice of where to set my foot down first. What if I choose wrong? What if I make a mistake?
Mistakes these days don’t just leave someone with hurt feelings, remedied by a simple apology and an offer for a sleepover, they can alter your path.
But in the end, as Kathleen Shannon so profoundly stated, your path is your path mistakes and all. And while I can look back and pinpoint certain decisions that I may regret, they didn’t knock me off my path completely, they simply weighed me down, making the hike more exhausting.
