Lesson to learn

I spent years hustling for a future version of myself, until I realized she might never show up. This is what I do instead.


You know that feeling on a Sunday night? The light is fading, and this low-grade dread starts to creep in. You’re mentally scrolling through the list of everything you didn’t get done. The emails you didn’t send, the laundry basket that’s still a mountain, the vague but persistent feeling that you should have *accomplished* more.

Yeah. That was my entire operating system for, oh, about a decade.

I used to think life was one giant checklist. A linear path from Point A (Me, a mess with big dreams) to Point B (Me, Finally Having My Life Together™). I believed that the value of my day was directly proportional to my productivity. Cross off enough items, and I’d earn my right to relax. I’d be *worthy* of a quiet moment.

Spoiler alert: the list never ends. You cross off three things, and four more magically appear. It’s a hydra of chores and obligations. And the relaxation you’ve been promising yourself? It’s always dangled just out of reach, on the other side of a future, more-perfect version of you.

The breaking point for me wasn’t some dramatic burnout (though there were plenty of those). It was a Tuesday. I had finished a big project, something I’d been grinding on for weeks. My first instinct wasn’t to celebrate or breathe. It was to immediately open a new document and start the next to-do list. My brain, without missing a beat, went, “Okay, what’s next? How do we optimize the next hour?”

I just sat there, staring at the blank screen. I felt… nothing. No satisfaction. No pride. Just the hollow hum of the next task waiting to be conquered. It was like I was a robot programmed for achievement, and my humanity had been quietly switched off.

That’s when the dumb, simple, profoundly obvious thought hit me: *What is this all for?*

I was so busy building a life for my future self—the one with the cleaner house and the emptier inbox—that I was completely missing my actual life. The one happening right now. The one with the sunbeam cutting across the dusty floorboards. The one with the stupid joke my friend texted that made me snort-laugh. The one where my coffee was still warm.

The lesson, the one I wish I’d learned way earlier, is this: **You don’t earn the right to be present in your own life. You just have to claim it.**

It’s not about ditching responsibilities. The laundry still needs to be done. The emails still need answering. But I’m trying to stop seeing them as hurdles to jump over before real life begins. Real life is the walk to the laundry room. It’s the taste of the coffee you sip while drafting the email.

I’ve started practicing a weird little form of rebellion. I’ll be in the middle of my productive hustle, and I’ll just… stop. I’ll leave the dishes in the sink and go stand on the balcony for five minutes for no reason. I’ll read a novel in the middle of the day, guilt-free. I’ll put on a song I love and just *listen* to it, not as background noise while I do something else, but as the main event.

And it’s in those completely “unproductive” moments that I feel the most like myself. Not a future, shinier version. Just me. The current, slightly messy, definitely-didn’-vacuum-today model.

The to-do list is still there. It’s just that now, I see it for what it is: a list of things to do, not a judgment of my worth. The real point, the whole messy, beautiful point, is happening in the spaces between the items. It’s in the deep breath before you start, the stretch after you finish, and the quiet decision to do absolutely nothing at all.

Future Me might never get her act together. And honestly? I’m starting to hope she doesn’t. Present Me is finally having too much fun.