"The Last Five Months."

He said it. Those very words.

I started this blog on one premise: what was going to happen over the next five months. That was our phrase all Summer, mapping out the game plan for this first semester of my second year of college. I was supposed to raise my GPA and lower my weight. Simple concepts... with much more difficult execution, in reality.

Tonight, my dad and I sat on the red couches of our living room with the SEC championship on in the background, and talked about the past, the present, and the future. Mostly about the future. But... a little about the past. "The last five months..." he began, and continued, but his words only trailed off as I heard those strange, backward-words echo through one ear and back and forth, reverberating through my brain like a rattling toy. The last five months? I couldn't believe it. Had they really come and gone? Sure, this is actually the fifth month of this journey now, but... it's come and it will be gone. (Which reminds me of a favorite line from an O.A.R. song, Irish Rose, "Lovers they have come before, and they will come again--but no one's ever loved me the way that I've loved them." But that's on a completely unrelated note.)

The point is: Time.

Time passes before us even more whimsically and unspoken than wind; At least we feel the passing of mist and clouds and air and breath... those things seem so transparent and in-graspable, but I assure you, they are far more tangible than this demon-angel, Time. It is Juxtaposition in an inexhaustible reality of the passage of life. Time is but a concept, created, employed, encouraged, utilized, and obeyed. But, unfortunately, it doesn't stop at just the job of Created Concept. It is the Circle of Life... it is the passing of loved ones, the butterflies in anticipation, the heart-stopping-second when you miss a step on the staircase.

They always say in that perfect cliche: The present is the future you once hoped for. And that, my friends, is a terrifying concept to this little twenty-year-old philosopher.

So it came and went, these five months months of hopes and dreams and plans. I made countless, endless, to-do lists. I had weekly goals, daily, monthly--I thought about tomorrow and I thought about 3 years ahead. Never before have my goals felt so attainable, I sweetly mused on my very first goal list I created in this season of my life. Yet, here I stand, falling short of so many things on that list (Size 8? Run 10 miles comfortably? No C's? 163 pounds?!) and I wonder what that says about me, about goals, about the possibility of things, and about my own grasp on reality.

(This is the part where you tell me that I'm reading too deeply into things, thinking too "Existentially," or that I need to stop assigning unnecessary weight to non-pertinent aspects of my life. Yeah, yeah, I've heard it all before. Trust me, I am well aware that I over-think everything, and potentially give too much authority to Happenstance to determine what is affirming or negating my life choices.)

I'm a dreamer. I could tattoo it under my skin if it weren't so trite. I am a strange balance of fatalist and optimist, interlaced into one. Weird, I know. I go back and forth between, "Shoot for the moon--even if you miss, you'll land amongst the stars," and, "Shoot for the moon--but if you miss, you'll shoot off into outer space and either be pulverized by an asteroid or you'll starve to death inside your astronaut suit, all alone, in the middle of a pitch blank endless universe." Yeah... that's a weird mix to try and balance out.


I've also heard it said that, "Whether you like it or not, tomorrow will come... Either you die, or you deal with tomorrow." (To put it succinctly.) Which, for someone who has battled the weighty burden of a depressive tendency/mental illness of some sort, that's kinda not the best way to view life. But, it feeds the fatalist within me. Sometimes, this concept is a very negative idea.... Time. Does. Not. Ever. Stop. Depressed people often find themselves thinking or saying, "I just want to go to sleep for a really long time... wake me up in a few days(/weeks/months/years, etc)." It's this desire to stop having to deal with the reality that is Time.

But I've learned that avoiding life--or sleeping through it--doesn't do a damn thing.

Actually, it does do something--usually, it makes things worse. I find myself sleeping away my mornings, letting the sunrise be something only the weary fluttering lids of my REM cycle can experience, through the light filling my little mint-green bedroom. I've also noticed that the times in my life I've been the least depressed, I've woken up early. I've been productive before 9am. When you let your sleep cycle get jacked up, you kinda start missing out on life.



Time management is something I'm fairly certain not one human being has ever conquered, and they never will. Like the elusive never-ending to-do list, it is just one of those given's in life that you must accept you will never be satisfied or content with. (Oooof, but the perfectionist within me HATES that idea. I want to be able to strive for perfection.)



If we abandon the idea that perfection is possible... do we give up any drive for improvement?


So 5 months have gone by, and a lot of cool stuff has happened. I ran a 5k, I lost 25 pounds, I have so far at least maintained the GPA I need, I've moved into my first apartment, heck, I learned to run! I started going to yoga for the first time! I learned that I can like fish! And tomatoes! And lots of other veggies! I kinda learned to cook, a little bit! I got a new job! I made some awesome artwork! I turned 20! I met some amazing people! I discovered the Botanical Gardens... and they became like a second home! One devastating thing about our life and our accomplishments is that we belittle them to things like numbers and goals... "Running a 5k" and "Losing 25 pounds" and we so often forget that we can and should celebrate the littler things, like learning to run and turning 20, and making a cool new painting.

As you all may remember, "The Next Five Months" was founded by the idea of "revisiting your New Years Resolutions" in the middle of the year and taking them seriously again halfway through the year. Well... here comes the new year. And it feels good to know that I really did DO something with my resolutions this past year. And now, it's time to create and institute an entire new list of "Rezo's." As is typical with most people, a lot of the same concepts will reappear in this year's list. But I'm still psyched as ever to get started with it's creation.


Time will pass, and it's up to us what we do with that time. Why hate your life when you have to live it? Why care if people will judge you if you follow your dreams? What if you decide in the middle of finding yourself that you found out you're meant to be somewhere else?

"You find you're holding on to everything you know, but the strength to move beyond is found in letting go." --Ben Rector.

There's so much I don't know.
And for now? That's okay.