Rest Stops

My lovelies! I've missed you terribly!

So sorry for the skipped post last week and the late post this week, I have been very busy with school and side projects. MY RESEARCH PROJECT GOT FUNDED!! Woo!!!!!!!

Any way, time for some of that rambling you all love so much...

The thing that has been floating around in my mind lately is reality. No, not like the TV shows, because lets face it no ones life is that cool. I'm talking more like the whole real life thing that is happening just past that glass screen you've been holding in front of you for the last few hours.

But i'll get to that. First, story time.

When I was a kid I spend a lot of time on the road. My loving parents would load me and my brother up in the car and drive to Idaho every other weekend to pickup my other siblings. These trips were long and my brother and I would almost kill each other by the time we got there. Naturally my parents would stop for gas which meant we all got to get some fresh air and my parents could remember they loved us and didn't want to leave us there. I'm the youngest and therefore the most spoiled, so these big brown eyes usually fluttered their way into getting a treat in the store when we stopped. I learned to love these trips because to a little kid, that Flintstones push up Popsicle made the trip worth every second.

I realized the other day that I spend a lot of time dreaming about the future. I have these big plans of what I want my life to look like and i'm constantly thinking, "Its going to be so great when I get there. I'm going to be so happy. I just need to do x,y, and z."  I think a lot of us do this, we assume that we won't be happy until we get where we are going. We get so busy planning our lives and what we want to accomplish that we forget to stop for a deep breath and a Popsicle.

The really sad thing is, we aren't necessarily unhappy, we just aren't focused on our current happiness. Stop what you are doing right now and think about your life. What was the last thing that made you smile? What was the last thing that made you laugh? and now.. for the Dr. Phil moment of this post, "how does that make you feel?" Really though, when I think about the last thing that made me laugh I realize how happy I am.

Its fun to plan your life, there so much potential to change and grow and so many things to do. However we have to enjoy the little stops along the way. We have to stop and realize our happiness is just as much about the trip as it is about getting there.

So that is what I'm going to try to focus on. I'm going to love my little stops, because I've got so much to be happy about. Including but not limited to the fact that i'm pretty sure I've got Popsicles in the freezer.

In conclusion, be happy in your stops. Be happy with the things that are happening right now. Those are the thing that will make it worth it when you make it.

"We are at our very best, and we are happiest, when we are fully engaged in work we enjoy on the journey toward the goal we've established for ourselves. It gives meaning to our time off and comfort to our sleep. It makes everything else in life so wonderful, so worthwhile" - Earl Nightingale

--Shlog