Making Every Year Count

Twelve months. Fifty-two weeks. Three hundred sixty-five days.

I’ve done this routine sixteen times. And now I realize, perhaps, I’ve only gone with the flow. If the flow brings me down, I go down … until the flow pushes me up again.

Sixteen times, but I still haven’t learned to savour each year. I’ve wished to go off to college ever since I understood that the big kids got to go to a special fun place. Away from home. Away from their parents’ clutches.

And now, I am a senior. I will be off to college in less than a year. However, I can’t properly comprehend that I am indeed going to apply to colleges. It’s as if I am stuck in time, lost somewhere in the past. As if I were on autopilot for the last few years, my time lost itself in a whirlwind of events I can’t really remember.

I have desperately tried to retrieve some sense of time, but my indicators of time are rare: travels, conferences, and moments when I truly was myself. I want to feel as though I’m not an imposter. I want to be able to look back on a year and think of hundreds of things I did. Not just a few.

My goal is to be able to look back on January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, September, December, and remember what I did.

I don’t want to be surprised with how old I am. I’ll create my own flow.