I get it now.

I tallied my past year and realized that I have done nothing of note. I am at the same job, have next to no social life (exception being Saturday night raiding parties on SWTOR -- but really, I'm not sure that actually counts, even if it is done via Skype with friends from grad school), am still terribly overweight, and, on most days, feel more than a little lost in the world.

And most of this would be fine -- everyone goes through rough patches of being just about the most boring person in the world. But what has me actually physically sick is the realization that, over the past 365 days, I have done almost nothing to change it.

Somewhere along the lines, I fucked up. I haven't pinned where exactly yet, but I think it was sometime around my sophomore year of undergrad when I went careening off my Planned Path onto Oh, Well, I Suppose I'm Rather Good At That, Let's Give That A Try Path. Since then, I have piddled around, haphazardly dashing in to try something without a real game plan and almost never actually following through and doing anything with the hodgepodge mess that has been electives and Master's degrees and job opportunities and friendships.

I'm sort of at a point where I feel like it was all rather worthless. I have all these bits and pieces and nothing begins to add up to a whole.

At one point, I was a planner. I was a list marker and a get-'er-doner and a person who was deadly serious when she said anything less than an A was failing (exceptions: anything that began with Calculus, ended in Mechanics, and the ridiculous rule did not apply to anyone's grades by my own).

And now, I have spent a year doing nothing. And it's not even just about me. I have done nothing to give back to my community in a year -- I've not volunteered for anything, helped with anything around the city, or done anything to become even a little bit Greener for the sake of the planet. I'm a lump. A pimple on the ass of society, as an old boss would say.

When I was 19, I forgot to adjust my dream. It was to be a physicist -- an astrophysicist, to be specific. I was highly involved on campus and around the city, helping younger students and working with the Catholic Charities foundation. I was someone -- one person in a group of many, working hard and doing something to leave just the tiniest bit of myself behind in every single thing that I did.

And then I took a hard right turn into being no one. And it wasn't until right now, looking over the past year that I realize just how utterly terrible it has become. I pass through life now. I do not live it -- not for myself, and not for others. I leave nothing of myself behind.

So I get it now. I get why I have been beyond depressed, utterly lethargic and, now, terrified.

I've lost a whole year. 365 days worth of time that could have been spent doing something, gone.

I am unsure how to fix the problem. I feel marginally better having identified it, but am still utterly clueless as to how to go about reclaiming the girl I was at 19  -- driven, outgoing, able to take on anything even if that anything was something I was ridiculously outmatched for, like Quantum Mechanics. I have to assume she's still in there, waiting for me to get my head out of my ass and start pursuing a dream again. She knows what I want to do -- write and teach. I also have to assume that, when I find her, she's going to be really fucking pissed at me for this year and the six that came before.

Tomorrow, I turn 26. And I intend to start getting my shit together.


Meg