Left Over

According to the step counter on my phone, I average over 10,000 steps a day on campus. That's about 5 miles (give or take). 5 miles of up and down stairs, elevator pacing, "Excuse me" and "thank you!". 5 miles of book purchasing, tea sipping, book bag hauling. 5 miles of outlines and paper editing. 5 miles of exams and runny noses, broken pens and back pain. 5 miles of reduced calorie blueberry muffins, cheap unreliable umbrellas. 5 miles of worrying and striving and doing better than I ever thought I could.

Getting lost feels easier now, familiar, normal. I'm in a sea of lost people, an ocean of searchers. The campus plays out at once foreign and familiar, but I've gotten used to it, comfortable being adrift and disoriented. I've stopped trying to put down roots and stake a claim here - this is only temporary. This is not my home.

I've got 40 more days of classes before it's all said and done, before I finally finish what I started, before I bury my excuses once and for all and forever, no headstone, no marker, no mourners. And it feels surreal. It feels like maybe I've never tried this hard at anything in my life. It feels like maybe I'm capable of so much more than I thought I was. It feels scary and exciting in all the best ways.

And it makes me feel foolish, remembering, looking back at all the time I spent not trying, comfortable and complacent with "just enough", "not now", "next year", "we'll see", "one day", "wait until". Its embarrassing looking back at yester-me lounging, skinny legs extended, toes outstretched, basking in imaginary tomorrows, as if I had a guarantee, as if I had all the time in the world.

I don't pity that guy. I loathe him. Because he knows better and chooses not to know better, choose not to DO better. Because reasons. So many reasons. All of the reasons. All of the best and good and perfectly reasonable reasons like so many voluntary chains. Like future-fasting. Like a spoiled brat who didn't want to know the difference between opportunity and effort.

But he is me. And I'm here. And I like where I am and where I'm going. And he's pushed me here, in spite of his laziness, his silly expectations, his perfectly reasonable reasons. And maybe I have something to learn from that. Maybe I shouldn't make an enemy of him just yet. Maybe he's the only way I could have gotten here at all.

According to the step counter, I've walked over 1000 miles between today and the day I started. And, if my step average holds, I've got about 200 more miles to go before I finish this final leg of the journey. And I'm going to take my time counting, smelling the wind like strange country, eyeing the bricks and the skirts and the goofy hats in rapturous wonder. Because this is my last go around and I don't want to miss a trick.

I won't ever be back this way again.