Don't Look Back In Anger

This year I only made one New Year's resolution in hopes of finally stopping the thing that's been plaguing me for almost two years: To stop looking back and wishing I'd done things differently.

Let me back up. There are a million things that I've done in my life that I believe absolutely and whole-heartedly were done the right way. I wouldn't change getting married young, or having my kids young. The thing I continuously obsess about, however, is not having my act together enough to finish school before all of my big life events took place.

I started college when I was eighteen like everyone else I know and at first, I loved it. I loved the freedom of choosing my classes and all of the reading (because I'm a nerd like that). I was also working my first ever full-time job and I was handling everything exceptionally well. And then, I wasn't. I'm not sure exactly what happened to my motivation, but it fizzled out. School became irrelevant. As an eighteen-year-old English major, I got a lot of "What are you going to do with that degree?" and it always bothered me (it still does actually, but I'm smart enough now to realize that a "pointless" degree is better than no degree at all). I didn't want to teach and I wasn't brave enough to even consider writing for a career. I also loved my job back then, which, retrospectively, was probably part of the problem. If students were paid to go to school, we'd probably all be a lot more motivated.

The thing is, looking back is dangerous. It's like driving down the street and looking in your rearview mirror the whole time. If your eyes aren't on the road and you're not looking forward, you'll crash. That's just common sense. But it's so easy to look back on your life and think about how you'd do things differently if you had the chance. Hindsight is always 20/20. Unfortunately, my brand of  hindsight typically includes beating myself up for not making the right choices when I had my whole life stretched out before me. I am, without a doubt, my own worst critic.

I see people my age starting successful companies, writing books, doing what they love and revolutionizing the world. Then I look at myself, sitting in a class that I should have taken ten years ago and I feel decidedly less-than. I get caught up in thinking about what I could have accomplished by now, instead of what I'm currently accomplishing. I get mad at myself for losing my motivation for no good reason. A million people can tell me that I'm accomplishing a lot just by going back to school, and the rational part of my brain knows that they are right. However, if you've learned anything from my blog as a whole, it's that "rational" isn't exactly my thing. Overall, I feel like I'm shortchanging my family because I have to devote every waking minute I'm not with them to homework, papers, and tests. I kill myself every semester for my 4.0s to prove that I'm not stupid, that I'm not a slacker, that I'm doing everything I can, although I have no idea who I'm trying to prove these things to. The only person who thinks that little of me is me.

One of my personal heroes Woody Allen said it best: "If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans". I thought I had it figured out ten years ago, but I didn't. I still don't, but at least now I'm going in the right direction. So here I am, vowing to stop looking back. What's done is done and no amount of beating myself up can change it. All I can do is drive forward and keep my eyes on the road.