Last night, I was watching an interview with Tony Hale (aka Buster Bluth), and he said something that really resonated with me. He talked about being present and “wak[ing] yourself up . . . to where you are”. This is how I have tried to live my life these past few months. I’m not very good at it, but I’m still trying.
When I decided to go back to school to finish my Bachelor of Arts degree, so many people had kind words of encouragement for me and many had questions of what would be next — I did too. It always gave me a bit of anxiety when those questions came. What am I going to do next? Will spending time and money on this degree help me? Will it be worth it? I realized early on this semester, and even before it started that I needed to focus on the present, on the now, not the future. Yes, it is important to have goals and something to work towards, but I find it so easy to become fixated on what’s next that I become unhappy or uninterested in what I am doing today, even if the choices of today will have a huge impact on what my future holds. Remembering that I am living today and the future is not something I need to worry about right now has really helped me to reduce my anxiety and stress levels so that I could have success this semester (something I haven’t had much of in my seven years of post-secondary).
I still don’t know what I’m going to do when I finish my degree. I don’t know if I will do anything that is related to what I am studying. But, I do know one thing: I am going to be present today. I am going to live in the now. I am going to wake myself up to where I am and enjoy it.
