I spend so much of my life waiting.

Waiting for the right circumstances, waiting for the right people to say/do the right things.

Waiting for that “right moment” to do… anything. Especially the things I know will make me happy in the long run.

Reading Derek Sivers’ book, Hell Yeah or No, I came across a piece that wound up explaining, for the most part, what this winds up looking like: Too many ands. As he puts it:

My unwritten condition for when to exercise was this:

When it’s a nice day, and I’ve finished my work, and I haven’t just eaten, and I’m feeling energetic.

But of course that rarely happens, so I wasn’t exercising enough.

Derek Sivers, Hell Yeah or No: What’s Worth Doing

I can’t go train Parkour unless I’ve finished my tasks for the day AND I haven’t just eaten AND I feel up for it, AND there isn’t much traffic AND I can make it on time. I can’t write a blog unless the timing aligns with the different timezones AND I’ve caught up to my reader a bit AND I have any sources lined up AND- well, you get the idea.

Over and above these conditions, though, is something a lot more intangible. Some sort of strange, “It’s not right,” feeling that isn’t instinct so much as a weird delay of gratification because of this need for an ideal set of circumstances.

My girlfriend gave me the gift of one of those retro gaming consoles. I love it, but I never play on it. Because of some vague sense that the environment isn’t perfectly set up for me to sit and play. Too much potential for interruption, too many steps between finding where it’s safely stored, through to unboxing, through to making sure my family doesn’t see and judge me for it.

I’m tired of waiting for special occasions. I want to just do the things that make me happy, and write and post when I want to, and train when I want/need to, and the rest will come with time and the independence of moving out.

Until then, I know, logically, that the moments will only ever be as right as I can make them. So to the extent that I can control it, I want to stop living my life on pause, waiting to be free enough to live.