A Change of Pace

New Year...new life? I have been thinking a lot lately about my life and how at 26 years I sometimes feel stuck and scared that this is what the rest of my life will look like...working the same job, living in the same city, doing the same things day in and day out that I do now. While nothing I do or don't do is out of the ordinary, I am not quite sure it is exactly what I want. I feel old and young at the same time, chained and free, optimistic and pessimistic, happy and sad...I can't quite put a finger on what it is that I want, but I know that something has to change, whether it comes from within or without. I set myself a timeline last year of 30. Thirty would be the age that I make big life changes that I am not quite ready to make yet. But the more and more I think of that age, the more I also think I should do something unexpected sooner. Take a path not crossed, make a change without abandon...DO something I have never done without having to plan every minute of it.

I want to highlight an entry from my friend's blog that really brought this need for change to my attention-

I’m 26 years old, the same age as my mother when she had me. At 26, mom was basking in the joy of starting a family. I can’t help but wonder what if someone had told her, in this precious moment, “You have twenty years. Just twenty years until the beginning of the end of your life.” Just something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately.

In my very first post, I wrote: “Cancer changes you, changes your life, changes everything.” I knew that; I’d lived that. I never could have imagined though how utterly transformative this journey would be. I haven’t even hit the halfway mark yet.

Someone once referred to Still Easier Than Chemo as my passion project, a perfectly beautiful descriptor at the time — until it became so much more. I’m surrendering myself to this mission. Why not dedicate my life to fighting the disease that robbed my mother of hers? Why not dedicate my life to running in honor of those who cannot?

Twenty years. What if I only had twenty years?

I’m making my move. I hope you find the courage and strength to make yours. Life is too short not to.

This post struck a huge chord in me. This friend of mine lost her mother to cancer and now she is making it her mission in life (something she would not have thought about years ago) to raise money and fight the disease in honor of her mother. It is more than a passion project- it has changed her life. It is not something she planned or wanted, yet it will make her live her life with more meaning and direction than she ever knew how to before. It was unplanned, unexpected but now, is so right.

I obviously don't want something bad to happen before I find a passion project, or my life's passion, but what needs to happen for me to make a life change that would bring me to a place where I don't look ahead 10 or 20 years and think, "eh"? Where I truly bask in the glory and beauty of the everyday and not the doldrums of a life and world without deep meaning and excitement? Would it be a job or a new city or a new outlook? Would it be all of that? When I see the age '26' written on things, I am reminded that I am still so young, so why do I so often feel like I am settled? I recognize that I have so much of a life to live...what will it take to feel like I am living it right? Does anyone else feel this way or understand what I am going through?

How do I go about a true change of pace?