Firefox is currently taunting me with 44 tabs that I opened with sudden vigor yesterday in the hope of making a giant step towards figuring out what I want to be when I grow up. “Know thyself.” Sounds easy, or at least straightforward, but in my experience, that project takes on a life of its own, progressing with fits and starts, especially for those of us whose idea of writing a final paper was pulling an all-nighter and finishing hours, or sometimes minutes before it was due. I guess getting to know yourself is much like getting to know anyone else: it takes time. Then again, you get to know others through conversation, but if I start having conversations with myself I might end up with more serious problems than not knowing where my life is going…
So, here I am, wriggling around in my seat in a way that would make my mother yell at me to sit still. Fortunately for me, no one is here and I can jitter and wiggle and squirm to my heart’s content without causing anyone the desire to gouge her eyes out with a dull spoon. I look around and my gaze is met by a multitude of sights: a cup of chamomile tea that I just steeped in the hopes of helping me to relax (or perhaps making tea was another way to procrastinate –I’m not entirely sure), my work manual that silently reminds me of a revision that I need to add into it by the end of the month (yup, that would be tomorrow), a short stack of magazines that I’ve been meaning to read and haven’t (the one on top is Writer’s Digest from February), the book “On Becoming Fearless” reminding me of a blog entry that I have yet to finish writing, a to-do list composed of twelve items (eight of which have stars next to them but won’t all get done), a perfectly ripe peach that I am saving for breakfast tomorrow, and a chocolate pudding cup that keeps tempting me to put off writing for just a few more minutes.
And then I stop to think. If, even in a hotel room that I will only occupy for 22 hours, I have a paragraph’s worth of distractions, how do I have any hope of actually getting anything done anywhere? And then I think of Stephen King’s book “On Writing,” in which he talks about how you have this vision of being a writer with an office and a big desk that you sit at for hours, but the truth is that you have to live to have anything to write about and where you write can even be a corner of the laundry room. The living part I’m working on, but the corner of the laundry room? Well, let’s just say that I have issues concentrating regardless of where I sit down. Then again, I haven’t actually tried the laundry room yet. Of course I don’t have a laundry room, so I’d have to settle for the Laundromat and I’m not sure how the owner would feel about that… And see? There goes my brain, metaphorically wriggling in its own right.
The point of this, you wonder? There is no point, except for the fact that I think everyone goes through this restlessness at some point or another and, as long as you keep working towards your goal, you’re still doing something right.
So, keep at it, my friends. I promise I won’t be giving up just yet. 
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