life.
It’s always tough, realizing that so much time has gone by and you’re nearing the end of an important time in your life – to look back and see that you’ve basically accomplished close to nothing on your big “to-do” during the time until the impending deadline of said to-do list.
I like to look back on the things I’d set to accomplish before my journey started. Usually, I have a to-do list I try and follow to keep me on track but have recently come to realize that sometimes, you just can’t plan everything. Life usually gets in the way. This to-do list I’ve often dictated out probably has about two things checked off and a lot of hopes and new additions. But I can always guarantee that I learn something, as life happens, and I learn from it.
Sometimes I like to revel in how young I am, and then promptly get scared at how fast the time flies and pretty soon it’ll already be time for my 26th birthday. It scares me just thinking about it and I’ve got ten months to go. See? Ten months! That’s already scary because just I felt it was just yesterday that I got a beautiful eight-diamond necklace from my boyfriend in front of my closest friends in Calgary at dinner for my birthday.
It’s been less than two months and already so much has changed at this point. Now I’m lying in my twentieth different bed I’ve been in over the last few weeks realizing I’ve created a habit of playing with the dangling pendant and wondering when and if I’ll ever choose to take it off.
Earlier this evening I opened my notebook and saw the to-do list I’d written on my first flight out of Toronto in October. Even though as I look at it now, not much is checked off, but I’ve done a lot. I didn’t have as much free time as I thought I would because somehow along all the hustle and bustle I realized that life got in the way of my hard-set plans, as it usually does, and I was forced to re-organize.
I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t learn anything on this trip, and I’d be lying if I said some parts haven’t been disappointing. My eyes and ears are open to taking the new experiences in while challenging my pre conditioned notions about business life and meeting people and working with strangers who quickly become family when you all meet together so far from regular lives.
I’m not entirely surprised at where I sit right now, alone in a hotel room, writing to myself instead of sending my usual end of the day messages to my person; but I’m a bit surprised it happened so quickly. There is that saying again, however – life happens. And you can’t change things because they don’t fit into your plans. I guess you just learn to deal with them and figure things out as you go along.