More advice from my father: it’s better to make a plan and deviate from it than to have no plan at all.
This afternoon I walked with two of my best friends through the scenic trails in Red Top Mountain State Park in Georgia. With pine nettles beneath our feet, the sunlight streaming through the trees, and a path mostly to ourselves we kept up the running conversation of the weekend: possibilities for the future.
We’ve spent time on the past too. Dredging up what we must. Communicating more freely than we have in years. But with the goal of moving forward, being able to share our dreams and ideas and maybes. We talk midwest moves, and annual camping trips, and what kind of house we’d buy. We talk money and career and laugh about skipping ahead into the next decade: our twenties happily behind us.
I’ve thrown around a lot of different futures for myself, all of them possible but none of them may be true. If I’ve learned anything from getting married and divorced young it must be that there isn’t one way to live a life. Sometimes what you plan for and what you think you want isn’t the right path. There is no right path and boxing myself into one sets me up for failure.
Instead I try to plan in broad brushstrokes. Get clear on my values. Think about the elements of my life that would bring me joy. Consider what it’s in my control and where I might need to bend to the times.
Being away from the city for the weekend awakens a longing for one possiblitiy: building a life in Door County where it’s quieter and beautiful. Busy summers, punishing winters, famliy nearby, and a chance to make an impact on a local level. To be involved and build community in a way I haven’t connected with in Austin. To build a home, to run a small business, to write, to adopt children, to give back.
It’s one version of my someday. Not a bad one.
My friends and I are all planners so we volley out dreams with ease and eagerness. It’s easy to imagine a utopia in the future. It’s easy to use the future as an excuse not to make my current life all it can be. A balancing act of taking steps to get to where I want to go and breathing in the moment. I want to keep looking forward with my feet planted in today.
After all, tomorrows change all the time. I can be happy in all of them.
With Love,
Natalie